
COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



THE STORY OF DU BARRY 



^4^y 



11 



Mrs. Leslie Carter. 



THE 



STORY of DU BARRY 



BY 



JAMES L. FORD 



With Six Full-Page lUustratioiis in Photogravure and 
Fifty-Five Half -Tone Engravings 




NEW YORK 
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



ThTT UiSRARY OF . 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Recsived 

MJG. 30 1902 

CnPVRIOHT ENTRY 

CLASS O- XXc No 
COPY 3. 






Copyright, 1902, 
By FiiEDEHicK A. Stokes Company 



Published in September, 1902 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

I. History sets the Stage 1 

II. A Lowly Beginning 19 

III. Entering upon her Career .... 40 

IV. A New Sun on the Horizon of Ver- 

sailles 72 

V. Presented at Court 94 

VI. The Petit Levee . . . . . . . . Ill 

VII. A Prime Minister's Downfall . . . 138 

VIII. The Wages of Sin 157 

IX. Marie Antoinette's Reign 182 

X. In Retirement 217 

XI. The Storm Breaks 240 

XII. Dreyfus-like Justice . . . . . . 258 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PHOTOGRAVURES 

Mrs. Leslie Carter Frontispiece 

The Beginning of a Great Love . Facing page 36 

A New Fancy " "92 

The Favorite of Royalty .... " "144 

" Swear on the Cross !".... " " 274 

David Belasco " "280 

HALF-TONE ENGRAVINGS 

" Fascinating Idlers and Handsome Noble- 
men" Page 7 

Reproduction of the Original Sign of the 

Milliner's Shop "11 

With her Shopmates at Labille's . . . . "15 

Milliner's Doll "21 

Something New in Bonnets "23 

Jeanette and Cosse-Brissac "31 

Hurdy-gurdy Player "35 

The Belle of Labille's Shop "41 



viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Copy of Affiche actually used in the Shop 

of Labille Pas,e 47 

A Noble Scoundrel " 49 

Grands Seigneurs " 57 

The Corset of the Period " 6l 

An Ominous Visit •'• 65 

The Soothsayer's Prophecy ..... " 73 

Orange Woman '• 77 

In Comedy Vein " 81 

Her First Meeting with the King ... "89 

Objects seen in the Milliner's Shop ... "91 

Wooed by a Royal Lover "97 

Sedan Chair " 105 

Jean Du Barry and Jeanette "107 

The Flute-player "115 

Punch Bowl o . " 1 ] 9 

A Courtesy to Royalty "123 

The Father of Cosse-Brissac "131 

Slippers "133 

The Petit Levee "139 

Screen and Toilet Table "145 

A Queen of the Left Hand "147 

Ecclesiastical Homage "153 

Jeanette and the Cardinal "159 

Zamore " I6I 

The Diversions of Royalty " l67 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix 

Louis XV Table Page 173 

Alone with the King " 1 75 

A Loyal Officer "183 

The Du Barry Coffee Cup "187 

A Lover's Peril "191 

With the Scent of the Violets .... "199 
Veritable Night Table actually used by Du 

Barry at Versailles "203 

Fortiter in Mode " 207 

The Search for the King's Rival .... "213 

Bodyguard of Louis XV . "218 

At the Height of her Power "219 

A Kingly Revel "227 

A Corner of Du Barry's Bedchamber in the 

Palace at Versailles ....... "233 

The Clowns' Gambol "235 

A Woman's Intercession " 243 

Spinnet of the Period "247 

With Breaking Heart "251 

A Jealous King " 259 

A Corner of the Property Room .... " 265 

In the Garden of Louveciennes .... " 267 

Condemned to Die . o " 275 

On the Way to Execution " 283 




THE STORY 
OF DU BARRY 



CHAPTER ONE 

HISTORY SETS THE STAGE 

NEVER go on the stage 
as Du Barry without see- 
ing that awful guillotine 
knife shining before me 
in every scene that I 
play," said Mrs. Leslie 
Carter one night just 
after the curtain had fallen on the last 
act of Belasco's drama ; and we who view 
the play from before the footlights, seeing 
every scene from the enlightened stand- 
point of latter-day knowledge, are perhaps 
inclined to wonder whether any vision of 




2 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

the guillotine ever troubled the dreams of 
Louis XV, Jeanette Du Barry and the rest 
of the dissolute court that went dancing 
and singing down the road that at last be- 
came the " deluge " that Pompadour had 
foreseen as the aftermath of it all. 

It seems inevitable, as we look back at it 
now, — this period of blood and vengeance 
that was the outcome of so many decades 
of luxury in high places and bitter poverty 
in the homes of the lowly ; yet we of the 
present day can no more read the future 
than could the nobles of a century and a 
half ago who danced and drank and wore 
fine clothes and cared little for the welfare 
of France so long as they basked in the 
favor of their king. 

They had had many warnings before the 
storm broke in its awful fury. In 1757, 
Damiens, the shabby man with the pen- 
knife who was tortured to death for his 
futile attempt on the life of the king, had 
written from his prison cell these ominous 
words : 

"Sire, I am sorry that I was so unfor- 
tunate as to gain access to you ; but if you 



HISTORY SETS THE STAGE 3 

do not take your people's part, before many 
years you and the dauphin and many others 
will perish." 

Earlier than that the philosophers had 
sounded the note of protest and warning, 
generally by means of pamphlets and books 
hurled into France from some rock of exile 
to which they had been banished. Vol- 
taire had foreseen what destiny had in 
store for his mal-governed country as clearly 
as had Madame de Pompadour, v* hose re- 
mark " after us the deluge " became the 
by-word of her royal lover's court. 

Sardou has said that when History makes 
a drama, the work is well done, and he 
speaks with a modesty that well becomes 
one of the first of modern French drama- 
tists. He might have added that History 
seldom does more than furnish the raw 
dramatic material which the play^^Tight 
must knead into dramatic form, even as 
the sculptor kneads the rough clay into 
the statue which he imbues with his own 
genius. 

In the case of Madame Du Barry, the 
last of that long line of " queens of the left 



4 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

hand " whose influence was so potent in 
French statecraft during the eighteenth 
century, History has certainly set the stage 
for her in gorgeous fashion, and made ready 
for her first entrance by years of Bourbon 
rule which brought about the social and 
political conditions under which she played 
her picturesque and interesting part. 

The age in which she lived was worse 
than the present one, in that a certain 
number of men and women, forming the so- 
called " privileged classes," had free license 
to do a great many things that their coun- 
terparts of to-day would like to do, were it 
not for the force of public opinion. It was 
an age of wanton luxury and indulgence 
for the few, and one of great suffering 
and misfortune for the many. Happily 
enough for the purposes of the drama, the 
world was beginning to tire of these con- 
ditions, and was preparing for a great up- 
heaval at about the time that Madame Du 
Barry set her foot upon the threshold of 
her destiny. 

The fires of liberty were ready for kind- 
ling across the ocean, where George Wash- 



HISTORY SETS THE STAGE 5 

ington of Virginia had already won his 
spurs in the French and Indian war ; and 
statesmen like John Hancock and Samuel 
Adams in Massachusetts were beginning 
to realize that there could be no loyalty 
and contentment in the colonies so long as 
George III continued to regard his Ameri- 
can subjects as people made only to be 
taxed for his benefit. But this king who, 
like his royal brother in France, believed 
that he ruled by divine right, paid no more 
heed to the remonstrances of those states- 
men of the colonies whose words should 
have had weight, than Braddock, the Gen- 
eral Redvers-Buller of his day and genera- 
tion, did to the warnings of his young staff 
ofiicer, Washington, who had had his ex- 
perience in Indian fighting and was familiar 
with the red men's tricks. 

Braddock's conceit and ignorance led 
him to underestimate the strength of his 
enemy, while he placed an absurdly high 
value on his own prowess and the advan- 
tage to be derived from fighting the red 
men " according to the rules of war," so 
it happens that the story of his defeat and 



6 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

death sounds very much like a chapter — 
almost any chapter — from the history of 
the Boer war. His disposition seems to 
have been not unlike that of King George, 
who certainly did not lose his American 
colonies because of his gracious and tactful 
methods of dealing with thein. 

And while the people of these colonies 
were preparing for the struggle from which 
they were to emerge a powerful young 
nation, one whose future possibilities even 
the wisest among us cannot yet predict, 
the French people, who had been ground 
down by years of Bourbon misrule, were 
being driven by the inexorable force of cir- 
cumstances into a revolution of a totally 
different kind, and one that was second 
only to our own in its effect on the genera- 
tions that were to come after it. 

There is nothing in our civilization of to- 
day which more closely resembles what is 
poetically termed the " ancien regime " in 
France, than the stockyards in Chicago, 
with their owners as the Bourbon king, and 
the sheep, cattle, and pigs as the people. 
This, however, is not quite a fair compar- 



HISTORY SETS THE STAGE 9 

ison, as the cattle are supplied with food, 
drink, and shelter, and are killed instantly, 
and not permitted to drag themselves off to 
remote parts of the field and there die of 
hunger, disease, or their wounds. They 
are of no use, however, except to be killed, 
and in this respect they bear a distinct 
resemblance to the subjects of Louis, 
known in the early years of his reign as 
"the well-beloved," and of his predeces- 
sor, "the grand monarch," by whom the 
common herd were looked upon as good 
for nothing except to pay taxes and stop 
bullets. 

Once in a while there are signs of revolt 
and dissatisfaction in the Chicago stock- 
yard, and in like manner, even before the 
Du Barry's accession to power, there had 
been signs of dissatisfaction among the 
human cattle of her august lover. But 
these little rebellions, put down — and 
often by hired mercenaries — as quickly 
as they were begun, were nothing more 
than the mere angry tossing of a few pairs 
of horns, or a squeal of defiance from some 
far-seeing pig, drawing back from the 



10 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

shambles in a vain effort to escape his 
predestined fate. 

For the human cattle who made up the 
bulk of the population of France, far less 
consideration was shown than for their 
hoofed and horned counterparts in Chicago, 
for it was the fortune of the first-named to 
be ruled absolutely by a selfish, pleasure- 
loving monarch who believed that he gov- 
erned by divine right, and that those who 
lived under his dominion could have no 
higher duty to perform than that of servile 
obedience to his will. He it was who could 
consign men with whom, perhaps, he had 
supped and walked and talked the day be- 
fore, to a living death in the Bastille, merely 
to satisfy his own anger or the jealous whim 
of a mistress. He it was who stood watch- 
ing the funeral procession of his dead love, 
Madame de Pompadour, as it started from 
the courtyard in Versailles for Paris, and 
remarked, as he drummed with idle fingers 
on the window-pane, " JNIadame la JNIarquise 
will have a wet day for her ride." He it was 
who, in the early years of his reign, gained 
the surname of "well-beloved," and who, 



HISTORY SETS THE STAGE 



11 



at the end, was hustled into the ground with 
less ceremony and respect than would have 
been shown to one of his own valets. 

Yet such was the divinity that 
did hedge this king, this splen- 
did type of the Bourbon 
who could neither learn, 
nor forgive, nor for- 
get, that the greatest 
ladies in his court 
vied with one an- 
other for the 
honor of filling 
the position 
left vacant 
by the death 
of Madame de 
Pompadour. 

But Louis 
XV would have none of them. " I will 
never choose another mistress from the 
ranks of the nobility," he said. "It's too 
much trouble to get rid of them when they 
pall upon me." 

Lord Chesterfield once said of him : " By 
an unusual combination, Louis XV was both 




Eeprod action of the original sign of the 
milliner's shop. 



12 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

hated and despised," and to the day of his 
death he never reahzed the awful and bloody 
depth of the abyss that lay directly beneath 
his feet and those of the wigged and per- 
fumed courtiers who helped him in his life- 
long race after pleasure, with ennui following 
close upon his heels. To the very end he 
lived only for himself, regarding the remon- 
strances of his cabinet and the opposition of 
his parliament as merely the outward and 
visible signs of a revolutionary spirit which 
must be crushed at all hazards. He went 
to his death still firmly believing that he 
had ruled by divine right, and little dream- 
ing that the Almighty, on whom he had 
sought to throw the responsibility for so 
much evil, was even then forging a thunder- 
bolt that was destined to involve Europe in 
a storm of unexampled violence, — one that 
would in the end clear the political skies 
and leave the atmosphere freer and purer 
than ever before. 

Within three months after the formal 
presentation of Madame Du Barry at the 
court of her king and lover. Napoleon 
Bonaparte was born in the Island of Cor- 



HISTORY SETS THE STAGE 13 

sica. He took the field at a surprisingly 
early age, but that was because he was 
sorely needed, and the world had waited for 
him till its patience had long since been 
exhausted. 

Such, in brief, were the conditions under 
which History prepared the French stage 
for Jeanette Du Barry's life-drama ; but 
although she furnished a gorgeous setting, 
and associated her with various men and 
women of great historic and dramatic 
value, the work of building a play was left, 
as it always is in such cases, to be done 
by the dramatist. 

For example, in Julius Ceesar, the greatest 
of all historical dramas, History has sup- 
plied the raw material in the shape of the 
life of Caesar, his murder, the events that 
led up to it, and its immediate results. 
From this splendid material Shakespeare 
constructed a drama which has done more 
than all else that has been written about 
Julius Caesar to impress upon the world 
the tragic story of his fall. In doing this, 
he did not content himself with arranging a 
number of scenes from the life of the great 



14 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

Roman emperor in order that his drama 
might be historically accurate in trivial as 
well as in important details. Had he done 
this, no matter if he had clothed his work 
in language as beautiful and convincing as 
that which still lives in his deathless drama, 
his work would not have survived a dozen 
representations, — in fact, it would not have 
been a play at all. 

But Shakespeare was a genius and not 
a mere cataloguer of events, and when it 
came to dealing with such a tremendous 
theme as that of the Roman conspiracy 
and the tragedy which it brought about, 
he set his imagination to work, and the 
touch of his genius transformed the dull 
clay of history into a living, breathing story 
that has touched the hearts of generations 
of playgoers and will continue to charm 
and interest and instruct so long as the 
English language shall be spoken. He 
invented the quarrel between Brutus and 
Cassius. He invented the great speech of 
Brutus to the Roman people. He invented 
that masterpiece of subtle, convincing ora- 
tory in which the brilliant Marc Antony 



HISTORY SETS THE STAGE 17 

stirs the very stones of Rome to rise and 
mutiny. In short, the world is indebted to 
the illuminating genius of the playwright, 
and not to a mere recorder of history, for 
nearly every one of the great scenes and 
speeches which have kept alive in the 
hearts of generation after generation of 
humanity the impressive story of Csesar's 
fall. 

It is a far cry from Shakespeare to Ros- 
tand, in time and in other respects as well, 
but apart from the interest that attaches 
itself to every chapter and paragraph of the 
Napoleonic story, what dramatic value do 
we find in the life of that " dove that found 
birth within an eagle's nest," the Due de 
Reichstadt ? None whatever, excepting 
that which the dramatist has invented. 
Even the character which Madame Bern- 
hardt portrayed with so much art is one in 
which Metternich, could he return to earth, 
would probably fail to recognize the unfor- 
tunate young prince whose unhappy destiny 
he helped to shape. But Rostand is per- 
fectly justified in what he has done. 

Given the son of the world's conqueror, 



18 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

baptized at Notre Dame amid the acclama- 
tions of all Paris, anointed in the cradle 
with the oil by the virtue of which he was 
to rule by divine right, and accustomed 
from his very earliest childhood to the cere- 
monial deference due him not only as a 
king, but also as the only son of one who 
was almost a demigod in the eyes of his 
people, it was only fair to assume that the 
fires of ambition burned fiercely within 
his breast, although, as a matter of fact, 
they did not. And it is on this perfectly 
justifiable assumption that the play of 
" L' Aiglon " is constructed. The real Na- 
poleon's son, whom we find in the pages 
of veracious, unimaginative history, could 
not have been made to serve as the central 
figure of a drama, because he did not possess 
the requisite attributes. 





CHAPTER II 




A LOWLY BEGINNING 

^HE life of Madame Du 
Barry, while not afford- 
ing in itself as much in 
the way of raw dramatic 
material as does that of 
Julius Cgesar, has never- 
theless been fashioned 
into a stage story of deep human interest, 
set in brilliant surroundings, and far better 
suited to the tastes of modern audiences 
than that of the poor little king of Rome. 
It is, moreover, a story which, while follow- 
ing the true course of history more closely 
than almost any successful historical play of 
modern times, is nevertheless sufficiently 
charged with the dramatist's imagination 
to seem in the eyes of twentieth century 



20 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

audiences an intensely interesting picture 
of what might very well have happened at 
the court of the French king. 

Historians differ widely as to the real 
character of this last of the Favorites, a cir- 
cumstance not to be wondered at when we 
study the conditions under which she lived, 
and take into account the extreme of adu- 
lation on the one hand and execration on the 
other that were the natural results of the 
king's fondness for her. These historians 
differ also as to her parentage, the date of 
her birth, the exact extent of her power, 
and in scores of other respects. 

It is certain, however, that she was 
born in Vaucouleurs, the same little 
French village in which Joan of Arc first 
saw the light nearly three hundred and 
fifty years before. Indeed, Anne Becu, 
the mother of Du Barry, always claimed a 
blood-relationship with the Maid of Or- 
leans, a boast which it would probably have 
been difficult for her to substantiate. Cer- 
tain it is that in the middle of the eighteenth 
century the Becu family was not one of 
great distinction, most of its members being 



A LOWLY BEGINNING 



21 



engaged in domestic service, while the 
certificate of Madame Du Barry's birth, 
taken from the parish records in the town 
of Vaucouleurs, describes her as " Jeanette, 
natural daughter of Anne Becu, sometimes 
called Quantigny, born on the 
19th of August, in the year one 
thousand seven hundred and 
forty-three, and baptized the 
same day.' 

Who little Jeanette's fath- 
er was will never be known. 
Tradition and history assert 
variously that he was a tax- 
collector, a sailor, and an 
unfrocked monk named Goinard 
de Vaubernier. From these possi- 
ble parents, Mr. Belasco selected the last 
named as being more interesting than either 
of the others, and he actually introduces 
him for a moment in the first act of the 
drama in the guise of a shoe-cleaner, fitted 
out with his elaborate contrivance for clean- 
ing shoes and imparting to them the dead 
lustreless finish that was in vogue in Louis 
XV's time. 




Milliner's 
Doll. 



22 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

In her own memoirs,^ Madame Du Barry 
gives her bh'th as the 28th of August, 1746, 
and passes over the maternal claim to kin- 
ship with the inspired maid as if she put 
no faith in it. She speaks of her father as 
a man without fortune who had accepted a 
mean situation as clerk at the Barrieres, and 
who had married her mother from love. 
The reason for this will be shown in an- 
other chapter. 

But, whether married or no, Jeanette's 
mother found herself, a few years after the 
birth of her daughter, absolutely without 
resources, and set out for Paris with the 
intention of trying her luck there. Through 
the kindness of a financier named Dumon- 
ceau, Jeanette was sent to the Convent of 



1 The four volumes purporting to be the memoirs of the 
Countess Du Barry have been drawn on guardedly for some 
of the material of lesser importance contained in this book. 
In all probability these memoirs are largely apocryphal, but 
they have been compiled, if not entirely by Madame Du Barry 
herself, at least by some one who was thoroughly familiar 
with the history of her time, as well as with her oiivn career, 
and who, for reasons of his own, did not wish to place his 
own name on the title-page. Other examples can be named 
of books which contain a vast amount of accurate and inter- 
esting information of a personal and delicate nature, and 
which are nevertheless apocryphal as to signature. 







^ 
^ 



Co 



A LOWLY BEGINNING 25 

Sainte-Aure. This convent was designed 
as a retreat for young girls whose condition 
in Hfe was such as to expose them to temp- 
tation, and here Jeanette remained until she 
was nearly fifteen. During all these years 
she lived a life of such extreme rigor that 
her subsequent relapse from austere virtue 
is not to be wondered at. It was an ex- 
istence of terrible severity for children as 
young as she. Clothed in an ugly dress, 
deprived of all the little ornaments that 
children hold dear, forbidden to laugh, 
jest or play with her little companions, 
and obliged to devote most of her time to 
work, nothing but her elasticity of spirit 
and marvellous birthright of roguish, infec- 
tious gayety enabled her to remain in the 
dreary Convent of Sainte-Aure as long as 
she did. 

Soon after leaving the convent, her 
mother lost her situation, and the young 
girl began to earn her living by going from 
door to door in Paris and the near-by coun- 
try with a little open box of watch-guards, 
imitation pearls, brilliants, and snuff-boxes 
which she offered for sale. Through the 



26 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

influence of a certain Madame Lagarde, the 
girl was removed from the temptations of 
the street and retained by her as a sort of 
lady's companion in her Chateau Cour- 
Neuve. The old lady was charmed with 
the growing beauty and bright, amusing 
chatter of her new retainer, and, for a time, 
all went well. 

It was at Madame Lagarde's that she 
gained that familiarity with certain of the 
outward and visible signs of high breeding 
which stood her in such good stead when 
in after years she was first admitted to the 
intimate circle of courtiers that clustered 
about the French king. Among those 
who frequented the house were Voltaire, 
at that time the most powerful, most 
quoted, most feared, and most sought-after 
man in the kingdom ; M. Marmontel, the 
author of the famous " Moral Tales," and 
M. Grimm, whom she describes as " a cun- 
ning fox, witty, though a German, very 
ugly and very thin." Besides these men 
of literary renown, Madame I^agarde's salon 
was frequented by such aristocrats as the 
Due de Richelieu, the Prince de Soubise, 



A LOWLY BEGINNING 27 

and the Due de Brissac, whose son was 
destined to play a part of no mean impor- 
tance in the story of her later years. Un- 
fortunately, however, Madame Lagarde 
had a young son living with her, and it was 
not long before she discovered and nipped 
in the bud a love affair between the two 
young people which had made a most 
promising beginning. Jeanette, cast once 
more upon her own resources, entered, 
under the name of Lan^on — that of the 
new husband whom her mother had just 
taken — the millinery establishment of 
Monsieur Labille in the rue Saint- Honore. 

Here, although safe from- the brutal 
temptations of the street, she was exposed 
to others that were far more dangerous. 

" Imagine," says that conscientious and 
entertaining chronicler, M. de Goncour, 
" stores with glass windows all around, 
where fascinating idlers, and handsome 
noblemen kept ogling the girls from morn- 
ing till night ; shutters which were used 
for correspondence and which allowed the 
notes, folded up fan-fashion, to be passed 
through the peg holes ; little trips out of 



28 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

doors where the smart milliner's girl, such 
as Leclerc has sketched her in the series of 
costumes of D'Esnoult and Repilly, trotted 
about with a conquering air, her head cov- 
ered with a big black hat sliaped like a 
calash, allowing her fair curls to slip down 
her rounded shapely waist, squeezed into a 
polonaise of printed calico, trimmed with 
muslin. Imagine, at the end of all this, 
conversations and proposals and, after the 
proposals and the responses to the proposals, 
it was for nearly every one of them, as it was 
for the little Lan^on girl, some Monsieur 
Lavauvelarbiere (one of Jeanette's early 
lovers) or some JMonsieur Duval or some- 
body else." 

This picture we may supplement with 
one given in JMadame Du Barry's own 
words : 

" I now commenced a new existence, and how 
different a one from that I had led at Sainte-Aure ! 
There, all was wearisome and dull ; there, the least 
motion, a word, a burst of laughter, was kept in 
check, and sometimes we were severely punished. 
At Madame Labille's there was a constant watch 
to keep the house in order and regularity ; but 



A LOWLY BEGINNING 29 

how different from the unceasinfic surveillance of 
the convent ! Here we were almost mistresses of our 
own actions, provided the allotted portions of our 
work were properly done. We might talk of any- 
thing that came into our heads ; we were at liberty 
to laugh at anything that provoked our mirth, and 
we might sing as much as we pleased. And we did 
chatter, laugh and sing to an unlimited extent. Out 
of the shop on Sunday, we were at perfect liberty 
and at equal liberty in our chambers, which were 
situated at the top of the house. Each of us had 
her room, which was small but very neat. My god- 
father had mine decorated with a handsome carpet, 
and gave me a commode, a pier-glass, a small table, 
four chairs, and an armchair of velvet, magnificently 
gilt. This was all luxury, and when my fellow- 
apprentices came to see my apartment, the richness 
of the furniture excited surprise and universal ad- 
miration. For at least four and twenty hours the 
sole theme of conversation at Madame Labille"'s was 
the chamber of Mademoiselle Lan^'on." 

It is not easy for us of the present age to 
imagine such an establishment as that in 
which little Jeanette found employment. 
Patronized by women of the very highest 
social position, it was at the same time con- 
stantly frequented by the most notorious of 
female harpies, while it kept in stock sword- 



30 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

knots, shoe-buckles, and other articles of 
male adornment, the sale of which furthered 
those free and easy flirtations between the 
apprentices and the idle men of the town 
which were carried on across the counters 
without even the pretence of concealment. 
Moreover, we must bear in mind the fact 
that in the France of the eighteenth cen- 
tury millinery and dressmaking were in- 
dustries of the highest importance in the 
economic life of the nation, and the crea- 
tions of such a shop as that of Labille were 
viewed by everybody and discussed seriously 
like works of art. 

At that time French taste governed the 
entire world in matters of dress and adorn- 
ment, as for that matter it did a century 
later during the Second Empire. The 
new fashions for each season emanated from 
the court of the king, and were sent abroad 
by means of a manikin called "the great 
doll of France," which was dressed in ac- 
cordance with the very latest styles, and 
sent to every court of Europe in charge of 
an envoy and a numerous suite of attaches 
and lackeys. So much importance did 




oq 






^ 
^ 



A LOWLY BEGINNING 33 

foreigners of fashion and distinction attach 
to the visits of this doll, the forerunner of 
the modern fashion-plate, which was of 
course unknown then, that once, during the 
Seven Years' War, when the British had 
established such a complete blockade of the 
French ports that it was impossible for a 
single ship to break through the cordon, an 
exception was made in favor of the vessel 
bearing the great doll of France, which was 
allowed to cross the channel. 

And it is with no small degree of pride 
that French historians describe the manner 
in which the flags of the enemy's fleet were 
dipped in salutation to the ship bearing the 
doll and its accompanying embassy on its 
way to teach the English how to dress 
themselves properly. 

It was toward the close of a reign char- 
acterized by luxury in personal adornment, 
wanton licentiousness, and selfish indiffer- 
ence to the needs of others, — a rococo age of 
elaborate ceremonial, superficial ornament, 
and over-gilding, — and in a shop that might 
very well have contributed to the outfit of 
the great doll of France, that Jeanette 



34 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

Vaubernier fii'st made her bow. She was 
then at the very dawn of womanhood, and 
equipped with gifts of personal beauty and 
coquetry which made her, from the very 
first, the object of gallant attentions on the 
part of the young men of fashion who flut- 
tered about the rue Saint-Honore, and 
awakened the immediate interest of the 
buzzards of both sexes, who were more in 
evidence then in Paris than ever before or 
since, and forever on the lookout for some 
attractive bit of femininity which could be 
added to the stock and trade of their hideous 
traffic. 

The peculiar clientele of the Labille shop 
must be borne in mind if we are to judge 
this young milliner's girl fairly, and we must 
also take into consideration her daily sur- 
roundings and the mode of life of her 
companions and shopmates. And these 
young women, had they been taken to 
task by any of the professional reformers 
of their day, would undoubtedly have 
justified their conduct on the ground that 
they were merely following the example 
set by the very highest women of the no- 



A LOWLY BEGINNLNG 



bility, and winked at by the princes of 
the church. 

Nor can we in fairness regard the excuse 
as a lame one, for at that time the post of 
Favorite at the king's court was 
one that was openly coveted, 
and shamelessly sought by 
women who bore the 
proudest names in the 
kingdom. 

As for the men with 
whom Jeanette was now 
brought in contact, they 
were worthy members of 
a society of such exalted 
ideas that it could conceive 
of no finer or more to be 
desired post than that of 
Favorite to a king who had 
long since grown weary 
of all womankind and was 
as difficult to please as a man might well 
be who had followed pleasure through 
youth, manhood, and up to the begin- 
nings of old age and to the very point of 
satiety. 




Hurdy-gurdy flayer. 



36 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

No man or woman would have been 
deemed worthy of a place in the corrupt 
court of this blase monarch who did not 
stand ready at a moment's notice to sac- 
rifice to his pleasure a wife, sister or 
daughter, as his taste might dictate. It 
was this spirit of loyalty to the person of 
their sovereign that had much to do with 
the development of the race of '^grands 
seigneurs,'' — courtly gentlemen bearing 
splendid historic names, wearing exquis- 
itely ruffled clothes, and carrying at their 
sides slender, jewel-hilted swords which they 
were always ready to draw in defence of 
their king, or of what they were pleased 
to term their honor. These were the men 
who deemed it an honor to sacrifice a Mdfe 
or sister to the king's whim, and it is 
pleasant to learn from the pages of history 
that His IVIajesty was always willing to 
pay handsomely for such proofs of loyalty 
on the part of husband or brother. 

There were, however, in the ranks of the 
nobility, men who could be singled out as 
notable exceptions to the rule of dishonor 
and licentiousness that prevailed at the 



The Beginning of a Great Love. 



A LOWLY BEGINNING 37 

court of King Louis, and one of these was 
that distinguished and gallant gentleman, 
the Due de Cosse-Brissac, Governor of 
Paris and Colonel of the Cent Gardes du 
Roi, whose after life was so curiously bound 
up with that of the humble little milliner's 
girl, Jeanette Lancon. 

It was this nobleman whom the king 
bade to take courage, and not grieve over 
so small a disaster as a scandal that affected 
the fair name of one of his female rela- 
tives. And to this he made answer : 

" Sire, I trust that I have courage to 
bear resignedly any disaster, though none 
to support dishonor." 

All historians unite in singling out this 
nobleman from the others of his day as a 
man worthy of the highest praise for the 
lofty purity of his character. 

"His romantic devotion to Jeanette Du 
Barry," says one of these chroniclers, " is 
indeed singular. For many years, until 
he fell a victim to the Revolution, he paid 
her a sort of passionate worship ; such as, 
in the old romances of chivalry, gallant 
knights were supposed to render to the 



38 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

ladies to whom they had sworn fealty. 
Before his death he made a will providing 
handsomely for her, and recommending her 
to the care of his nearest of kin as one 
' who has been very dear ' to him." 

But it was not every young milliner's 
girl who had the good fortune to win the 
chivalrous devotion of such a man as the 
Due de Cosse-Brissac. They were men 
of a very different sort who came crowding 
into Labille's shop, ostensibly to look at 
sword-knots or the latest design in shoe- 
buckles, but in reality to flirt with the 
young girls, to invite them to theatre and 
supper parties, and to arrange with them 
for meetings on Sundays and holidays. 
The esteem in which they held these 
young apprentices may easily be imagined. 
And if they could traffic openly in the 
honor of wife or sister without loss of 
caste, who can blame these girls for regard- 
ing their attentions as a distinction to be 
proud of? 

The modern biped whose mission in life 
is to follow and insult young women who 
work for a living is a despicable creature, 



A LOWLY BEGINNING 39 

but he is a high-minded gentleman in 
comparison with some of the " grand sei- 
gneurs " who used to haunt the milhner s 
shop of Madame Labille, and we cannot 
fairly estimate her character without taking 
theirs into account as well. 





CHAPTER III 




ENTERING UPON HER CAREER 

ADAME LABILLE 

was the real owner of 
the sliop which was con- 
ducted, for form's sake, 
in her husband's name. 
It was situated in the 
rue St. Honore at the 
corner of the rue Neuf-des-Petits-Champs, 
since made world-famous in Thackeray's 
" Ballad of Bouillabaisse." It is in this 
shop that the dramatist first reveals his 
heroine as a light-hearted, roguish girl, 
ready to flirt with any one who comes 
alonff, no matter whether he be soldier or 
prelate, perfectly willing to borrow for her 
own use the new hat which has just been 
made for a princess, and obviously a girl 
who is on the best of terms with herself 




<>3 









ENTERING UPON HER CAREER 43 

and every one about her. The same quaH- 
ties of character and disposition which 
'made her popular with her shopmates, 
which won the love of her employer and 
held it, too, to the very day of her execu- 
tion, are the qualities which enchained the 
fancy of Louis XV the first time that 
he saw her, and enabled her to hold her 
place as Favorite until the end of his reign. 
In the play the shop in which Jeanette 
Vaubernier actually worked is reproduced 
as nearly as possible, and the back of the 
scene is so constructed that, reversed, it is 
used to reveal the exterior in the final act 
of the drama. In all respects this scene is 
a perfect study of a milliner's shop of that 
period. The ajffiche, or sign, which hangs 
on the wall, is an exact copy of the one 
which was actually displayed in Labille's 
shop. And if we read it with the aid of 
opera-glasses, we learn precisely what sort 
of goods were sold there. These very 
goods are displayed in the mimic scene, 
and are of great variety, for the milliner 
of Louis XV's time not only made hats 
and bonnets, but also kept a large stock of 



44 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

silks, muslins, and other dress fabrics, to- 
gether with buckles, high-heeled slippers, 
sword-knots, and other articles of wear and 
adornment. 

The benches scattered about the room 
for the convenience of the customers are 
copied from those in use at that time, and 
the bandboxes are specially designed for 
hats that were larger and much more elab- 
orate than those that are worn at the pres- 
ent day. The sedan chair that stops for a 
single moment before the door is well 
worth the attention of the serious student 
of the Louis X\^ period. It is an exact 
copy of the one used by the Polish princess 
who became the wife of Louis and the 
Queen of France, and it opens in such a 
way as to admit the elaborately large head- 
dresses which were in fashion during her 
time. 

It was during her apprenticeship in this 
shop that Madame Du Barry, according to 
her own confession, had her first love affair. 
Her sweetheart was a young pastry-cook 
named Nicolas IMothon, and his lowly sta- 
tion in life excited the contempt of the 



ENTERING UPON HER CAREER 45 

other young women in the shop, whose 
adorers were either notaries or barrister's 
clerks, students or soldiers. 

That her attachment for her humble 
lover was genuine cannot be doubted, for 
years afterward when, at the close of her 
remarkable career she had retired to pri- 
vate life, this woman who had basked in 
the supreme favor of her king wrote as 
follows : " When I call to remembrance 
all those who have adored me, shall I say 
that it is not poor Nicolas, perhaps, who 
pleased me least 1 I, too, have known 
what first love is." 

In the drama there is no Nicolas the 
pastry-cook. Wisely enough, Mr. Belasco 
has disregarded whatever claims to priority 
he may have possessed, and plunged at 
once into the one true, enduring, and credi- 
table love affair that runs through the life 
of his heroine. 

Young Cosse-Brissac appears in the very 
first act, an ideal French lover, ardent, 
chivalrous and handsome. As a matter of 
fact, although history does not speak defi- 
nitely on the subject, the young noble did 



46 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

not make known his love for her until 
some years later ; but, in deference to 
dramatic exigencies, this affair of the heart 
is made to date from the very beginning 
of the drama. He comes to see her in the 
shop, and she flirts with him across the 
counter, while pretending to wait on one 
of the customers. He brings her flowers, 
too, — a bunch of violets, — and their fra- 
grance permeates the whole play. In as- 
suming that this love affair was a pure and 
honorable one throughout, Mr. Belasco does 
not violate historical truth, — though he 
would be perfectly justified in so doing, — 
but simply avails himself of the fact that 
history tells us nothing positively to the 
contrary. 

Moreover, he has made this love affair, 
with its consequent hates and jealousies, 
the chief motive of his drama, quite prop- 
erly giving it precedence over her more 
mercenary relations with the king. 

After the affair with the pastry-cook 
came one with a hair-dresser named Lamat, 
which lasted no longer than that unfortu- 
nate gentleman's very short purse. This 



ENTERING UPON HER CAREER 47 



young man, however, may be said to have 
left his mark on history by virtue of a cer- 
tain style of hair-dressing which he designed 
expressly for his young sweetheart,, and 
which is still known — , .^ 

when known at all — 
by her name. After 
Lamat liad impover- 
ished himself through 
the extravagance of 
his young mistress he 
fled to England to es- 
cape his debts while 
she entered a gam- 
bling house kept by a 
certain Madame Du- 
quesnoy in the rue de 
Bourbon. In those 
days the fashionable 
Parisian gambling houses were much fre- 
quented by women, and were generally 
looked upon as convenient places of rendez- 
vous for the light-minded and dissolute. 

Madaine Duquesnoy's gambling house 
serves as the setting for the second act of 
the play, and a very notable scene it is too, 



LATOILjLTTG. 
^^"11 est arrive de tres 
belles /e^/rj d'li mt 
Au 3'" LABILLJC , 

cTilaie-hand 9e iyKuded 
hie S^mve~dc\i-'/i/sf~> G^^i im/j. 
veU (a Jjface De4 Victoned 

Lous ce qui concerne Ic^ 
djuftemens de danies 







Copy of affiche actually used 
in the shop of Labille. 



48 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

done entirely in a peculiar shade of red. 
It is a shade that cannot be found else- 
where in this country, for it is made ex- 
pressly for this scene in France, and the 
silk brocade which is employed for walls, 
curtains and furniture is dyed with it. It 
is the only shade of red that could be used 
as a background for a woman with such 
extraordinary red hair as that of Mrs. 
Carter. 

It was while frequenting this gaming 
house that Jeanette Vaubernier (or Lan^on, 
as she called herself now) first met, in the 
person of the Count Jean Du Barry, a 
man who was destined to play a most im- 
portant part in the shaping of her strange 
destiny, and whom Horace Walpole, in his 
memoirs of that period, aptly characterized 
as " a most consummate blackguard." The 
count came from the neighborhood of Tou- 
louse, and always claimed connection with 
the Barry family who have resided for 
years in the south of Ireland, as well as 
with their kinfolk the Barrymores. He 
had come up to Paris from Toulouse, 
leaving behind him a wife who in after 



ENTERING UPON HER CAREER 51 

years contemptuously refused to accept 
any benefit whatever from the hands of 
either her husband or tlie Favorite. In 
Paris the count succeeded in obtaining a 
government contract for supplying provi- 
sions to the Island of Corsica, and with 
the money which this yielded him he in- 
dulged his tastes for gambling and other 
debaucheries to a degree which soon gained 
for him the name of Roue. 

As time went on and his acquaintance 
among men of wealth and fashion increased, 
the count found other ways of earning 
money beside his Corsican contract. One 
source of revenue was the gambling table, 
where at this time fortune always smiled 
upon him, and another was the traffic in 
young and pretty women, in which, like 
many another nobleman and grande dame 
of that corrupt age, he took part without 
any evidence of shame. This man is known 
to have carried on his infamous trade as far 
back as the time of Madame de Pompadour, 
whom he had sought to supplant with a 
certain Mademoiselle Dorothee, the daugh- 
ter of a Strasburg water-carrier. That there 



52 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

was " money in the business " may be 
inferred from the fact that the Count Du 
Barry had the effrontery to ask for him- 
self the post of Minister to Cologne on the 
ground that it was he who had introduced 
her to the king, and that, too, without 
waiting to learn if she had found favor in 
the royal eyes. 

Under the protection of this gallant gen- 
tleman Jeanette was extremely happy for 
she was allowed to plunge heart and soul 
into the gayest life that the French capital 
had to offer. It was in the very midst of 
all this gayety that something happened 
which she records at considerable length, 
and which is presented, in a somewhat al- 
tered form, in the drama. One day while 
walking in the street she was followed by 
a young man of distinguished appearance, 
richly clad, and with something peculiarly 
sombre and mysterious in his face which 
excited her curiosity. This young man 
dogged her footsteps for two or three days, 
until at last she turned upon him and asked 
him what he meant by following her. 

" Mademoiselle," he said in most respect- 



ENTERING UPON HER CAREER 53 

ful accents, " promise to grant me the first 
reasonable favor I shall ask of you when 
you come to be Queen of France." 

Smilingly she gave the required promise, 
and then the unknown continued : " You 
think me mad, I know ; but I pray you 
have a better opinion of me. Adieu, 
mademoiselle. There will be nothing 
more extraordinary after your elevation 
than your end." 

Returning home she related the inci- 
dent to Count Jean, who was profoundly 
impressed. 

" It is strange," he said, " but that proph- 
ecy fits in with what has already come into 
my own head. Why should you not be 
queen, — not the real queen, of course, but 
as Madame de Pompadour was ? " 

From this moment the scheme suggested 
by the words of the mysterious stranger 
took complete possession of Count Du 
Barry's breast, and for weeks he thought 
of it night and day, and planned a hundred 
projects for its accomplishment. 

In the drama this incident receives due 
attention, although for pictorial purposes 



54 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

the prophecy is not made by the young 
man in the street but by a picturesque old 
witch who comes into the gaming house to 
tell fortunes. In this act, too, we see the 
change that has taken place in the character 
of the young girl whose roguish follies were 
but yesterday the delight of her companions 
in the millinery shop, and a constant source 
of attraction to the young men of fashion 
who came flocking about there. She is a 
woman now, and has set her feet, lightly it 
is true, but none the less surely, in the path 
that she is to follow to the end, and which 
leads direct to the palace of A^ersailles. 

Under the tutelage of the unprincipled 
Du Barry she has entered upon a life of dis- 
sipation and excitement which is already 
beginning to tell on her, and from which 
she recoils now and then at the thought of 
Cosse-Brissac. 

Compressed into this scene are two of the 
crucial events of her mimic life. One, his- 
torical, her meeting with the king, and the 
other, invented, her quarrel with her lover 
which definitely determines her future 
course of life. 



ENTERING UPON HER CAREER 55 

Concerning this gambling house period 
of her career Madame Du Barry herself 
says : " My entrance into the world was 
bad ; the progress of it was like the com- 
mencement, and I led a dissipated life." 

It is during one of the moments of re- 
flection that come now and then to such 
as she — no matter how fast the pace or 
how deep the cup — that she goes back in 
fancy and with infinite yearning to the days 
when she wandered through country lanes 
and hedge-rows, selling her little trinkets 
to whomever would buy. The sky was 
blue then, the grass green, and the violets, 
which she loved, and which Cosse gave 
her, were lifting their shy heads in the 
quiet places in the woods. 

The stranger's prophecy made a profound 
impression on Jean Du Barry. And, in- 
deed, the prospect of supplying an incum- 
bent for the place that had been vacant since 
the death of Madame de Pompadour was 
in itself enough to completely enlist the 
sympathy and interest of a man of his 
nature. 

For to be the Favorite of the King of 



56 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

France meant not merely a life of indolent 
pleasure, but power far exceeding that 
of any queen or minister. The post car- 
ried with it the appointment of cabinets, 
the dismissal of statesmen and generals, the 
disposal of the highest honors within the 
gift of the sovereign, and unlimited drafts 
on the public treasury. It is not easy for 
people of the present day, who have grown 
up under such institutions as ours, to un- 
derstand how the French nation could sub- 
mit year after year to such government 
as this. 

But if the sufferings of the people were 
great, so was their vengeance, and the Reign 
of Terror was simply a natural and inevitable 
outcome of it all, — the mad bloodthirsti- 
ness of a wild beast which, hunted and tor- 
mented beyond all endurance, turns upon 
its pursuers and rends them. The blood of 
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette was shed 
in atonement for the crimes of the two 
reigns that preceded theirs. 

Since the days of the elegant Pompadour 
there had been no Favorite in the royal pal- 
aces, though it would have been hard to 



ENTERING UPON HER CAREER 59 

find among all the high-born dames of 
France a single one with any pretensions 
whatever to youth and beauty who did not 
aspire to the post. Many ther^ were, in- 
deed, whose claims were artfully pressed 
by near relatives or mercenary intermedi- 
aries ; but the king, who was by this time 
nearly threescore years of age, and had run 
the whole gamut of pleasure and dissipation, 
would have none of them. By nature 
morose and " unamusable," as Talleyrand 
said of the first Napoleon, as years went by 
he grew more and more difficult to enter- 
tain. Madame de Pompadour had been a 
woman of wit, beauty, and talent. A con- 
summate actress behind as well as before 
the footlights, she had not only made her 
way skilfully among the grand ladies of the 
court, but had also organized the theatre of 
the Petits Cabinets, in which she was wont 
to entertain the king, taking the leading 
part herself and choosing her supporting 
company from among the ranks of the 
higher nobility. 

These performances were usually given 
to an audience of not more than twoscore, 



60 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

and so great was the fame that attached 
itself to them, that ambassadors and cabinet 
ministers considered it an honor to be in- 
vited to take even the smallest part in the 
representation. 

Madame de Pompadour, moreover, was 
a woman of genuine artistic temperament, 
and one thoroughly in touch with the spirit 
of her luxurious, richly decorative age. 
With her own hands she engraved nu- 
merous portraits of her royal lover and 
did much to develop the manufacture of 
Sevres porcelain, which was begun during 
her reign. 

Jeanette Vaubernier, on the other hand, 
was merely an unlettered Parisian grisette 
who had been transplanted from behind 
the counter of the milliner shop, where 
she had bloomed like a fragrant, healthy 
carnation, to the hot-house atmosphere 
of a gambling house, where, among the 
painted and wrinkled and world-worn habi- 
tues, she seemed like an exotic of rare 
beauty and exquisitely fresh charm. In 
the ways of court life she had had abso- 
lutely no experience, and she herself laughed 




ENTERING UPON HER CAREER 61 

in unaffected merriment at the mere idea 
of filling the place of the gifted and beau- 
tiful Pompadour. 

Nevertheless the day came when Count 
Du Barry entered her apartment radiant 
with delight, and informed her 
that their dinner-table that 
night was to be graced by no 
less a person than that widely 
known and infamous creature 
of Louis XV called Lebel. 

Now Lebel's nominal posi- 
tion at court was merely that 

/» 111 1 1 1 1 1 1 • The cursct of 

of valet de chambre to the kmg ; tf,,^,,^,^. 
but there was no man in the 
royal service who was more diligently 
courted by men and women of position 
than this same Lebel, and for no other 
reason save that it was generally known 
that he commanded all the approaches 
through which a woman might hope to 
reach the much coveted place of Favorite. 
As it was necessary that the place should 
be filled by a married woman, it was agreed 
that Jeanette should be presented to Lebel 
as the wife of Jean's brother Guillaume, 



62 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

who still had his home in the country. So 
much excited was the count over their 
good fortune in securing a guest of such 
distinction that he assumed personal charge 
of Jeanette's toilette, as well as of the din- 
ner, and for two hours he divided his time 
between her dressing-room and the kitchen, 
to the despair of both cook and hair-dresser. 
He had his reward, however, for Lebel was 
conquered by the first smiling glance of his 
hostess, and to the count's question, " What 
think you of our new beauty ? " he made 
answer, as he raised her hand to his lips : 
" She is worthy of the throne." 

The company sat down to dinner, and 
the king's valet de chambre was so warm 
in his praise that the count began to fear 
that he had fallen in love with Jeanette 
himself, and would refuse to resign her to 
any one else. 

Two days after the dinner the king's 
valet de chambre called again and, finding 
Jeanette alone, talked to her quite seriously 
of her personal charms and of the part 
which a woman like herself might assume 
under the conditions then existing in France. 



ENTERING UPON HER CAREER 63 

" Fearing to compromise myself," relates 
Madame Dii Barry, " I made no reply, but 
maintained the reserve which my character 
imposed upon me. I saw that he really 
thought me the sister-in-law of Count Jean, 
and I left him in all his error, which was ma- 
terial to my interests. I am not clever, my 
friends ; I never could conduct an intrigue. 
I feared to speak or do wrong ; and, whilst I 
kept a tranquil appearance, I was internally 
affitated at the absence of Count Jean. 

" Fortune sent him to me. He was 
crossing the street when he saw at our door 
a carriage with the royal livery, which 
Lebel always used when his affairs did not 
demand a positive incognito. This equi- 
page made him suspect a visit from Lebel 
and he came in opportunely to extricate 
me from my embarrassment. 

" ' Sir,' said I^ebel to him, when he en- 
tered, 'here is the lady whose extreme 
modesty refuses to listen to what I dare not 
thus explain to her.' 

" ' Is it anything I may hear for her ? ' 
said the count, with a smiling air. 

" ' Yes, I am the ambassador of a mighty 



64 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

power ; you are the minister plenipoten- 
tiary of the lady, and with your leave we 
will go into your private room to discuss 
the articles of the secret treaty which I 
have been charged to propose to you. 
What says madame ? ' 

"'I consent to anything that can come 
from such an ambassador,' was my answer, 
and thereupon Count Jean led him into 
another room." 

In this private interview the ambassador 
informed the plenipotentiary that the king 
had become deeply interested in the de- 
scription he had given to him of the 
charms of the ravishing JNIadame Du Barry, 
and that he desired an interview with her 
in order that he might himself be the 
judge of her beauty. 

The count, naturally enough, was agree- 
able to this proposal, and Lebel continued, 
saying that he intended to entertain the 
king and several of his court, including 
the famous Due de Richelieu, at supper 
the following evening. He had promised 
His Majesty that Madame Du Barry should 
be one of the party. 




^ 






ENTERING UPON HER CAREER 67 

The count eagerly accepted, in the 
name of his supposed sister-in-hiw, the 
valet's invitation, and no sooner had the car- 
riage with the royal liveries rolled away 
than he hastened to the room where the 
one-time sweetheart of Nicolas the pastry- 
cook sat waiting to learn the results of the 
interview, her brain dazzled at the mere 
thought of becoming the mistress of His 
Most Christian Majesty, I^ouis X^^, 

" Victory ! " cried the count, delightedly 
as he entered the chamber. " Victory, my 
dear Jeanette ! To-morrow you sup with 
the king ! " 

And on receipt of this information, we 
learn that dear Jeanette turned pale, lost 
her strength completely and was compelled 
to sit, or rather to fall into a convenient 
chair. When she had recovered a little. 
Count Jean told her of his interview with 
Lebel, and advised her as to the course that 
she should follow should she become the 
Favorite of the king. 

" To-morrow you will be everything ! " 
he cried with energy ; " but we must think 
about this morrow. JNIake haste, noble 



68 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

countess. Go to all the milliners — seek 
what is elegant, rather than what is rich. 
Be as lovely, pleasing, and gay as possible ; 
this is the main point — and God will do 
all the rest." 

Late on the following day, the Du Barrys 
presented themselves at Versailles, and were 
eagerly received by Lebel, who came for- 
ward, saying : " Ah, madame, I began to 
fear you might not come. You have been 
looked for with an impatience — " 

" Which can hardly equal mine," inter- 
rupted INIadame Du Barry ; " for you were 
prepared for your visitor, whilst I am yet 
to learn who is the friend that so kindly 
desires to see me." 

" It is better that it should be so," added 
Lebel. " Do not seek either to guess or 
discover more than that you will here meet 
with some cheerful society, — friends of mine 
who M ill sup at my house, but with whom 
circumstances prevent my sitting down at 
table." 

" How ! " she exclaimed with affected 
surprise. "Not sup with us ? " 

" Even so," replied Lebel, and then added, 



ENTERING UPON HER CAREER 69 

with a laugh, "he and I sit down to sup- 
per together ! AVhat an idea ! No, you 
will find that just as the guests are about 
to sit down at table I shall be suddenly 
called out of the room, and shall only 
return at the close of the repast." 

Had Jeanette Du Barry been a woman 
of greater experience in the ways of the 
polite world, it is not at all unlikely that her 
history would never have been written, and 
that her acquaintance with royalty would 
have begun and ended at the little supper 
in which Louis XV bore the title of the 
Baron de Gonesse, and at which no cover 
was laid for the plebeian host. If there 
was one moment in her life in which she de- 
serves praise, — and, to do her justice, there 
were many, — it was this one of such great 
importance to her. Instead of endeavor- 
ing to charm the man whom she knew to 
be her king by imitating the airs, graces, 
and affectations of a society with which he 
had long been surfeited, instead of simulat- 
ing the embarrassment to which every 
woman resorted as a sort of tribute of 
homage to royalty, she had the good sense 



70 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

to remain her own simple, natural self. 
Not for years had the worn-out monarch 
met a woman with such hoydenish exuber- 
ance of spirit, such beauty of face and 
form, such bright, lively chatter. With him 
it proved a case of love at first sight. 

On her return to Paris the next day 
Jeanette received from him a magnificent 
diamond aigrette, worth at least sixty 
thousand francs, and the sum of two hun- 
dred thousand francs in bank-notes. Both 
she and Count Jean were well-nigh struck 
dumb with astonishment at the sight of 
these treasures, which, so the record runs, 
he divided into two equal parts, putting 
one into his own pocket, and the other into 
the escritoire of his soi-disant sister-in-law. 
And she in her turn bestowed a large dou- 
ceur upon Henriette, her faithful maid, and 
before nightfall contrived to squander at 
least one-quarter of her share on all sorts of 
beautiful but unnecessary trifles. 

It is recorded also that that evening she 
and the Count Jean sat late in grave coun- 
cil. The different ministers and generals 
passed in review before them, to be retained 



ENTERING UPON HER CAREER 71 

or dismissed as they thought best ; new 
schemes of taxation — Heaven knows the 
people were taxed beyond all endurance 
then ! — were seriously discussed, — in short, 
they began in idea to act as if sovereign 
power in France had already been bestowed 
upon the new Favorite. 

"After all," said Jeanette Du Barry, " the 
world is but an amusing theatre, and I see 
no reason why a pretty woman should not 
play a pretty part in it." 





CHAPTER IV 

A NEW SUN ON THE HORIZON OF 
VERSAILLES 

HE next day Madame 
Du Barry repaired again 
to ^^ersailles, where the 
king was awaiting her 
witli such impatience 
that he hastened to 
greet her while she was 
still at her dressing table completing her 
toilet. She was installed at once in a 
splendid apartment, attended by obsequious 
serving women, and from that moment 
had a regular establishment of attendants 
appointed for her special use. 

That night, as the two sat in conver- 
sation over the supper-table, the king 
informed his new mistress, with a degree 
of fervor that left no shadow of doubt in 




A NEW SUN ON THE HORIZON 75 

her mind, that she was now no longer an 
obscure, friendless woman, but a personage 
very, very dear to the heart of the sovereign 
of France. To use the exact expression of 
Lebel, she was "the new sun which had 
arisen to illumine the horizon of Versailles." 

The Due de Richelieu lost no time in 
doing homage to her, and brought with 
him the Due d'Aiguillon, at that time one 
of the most powerful nobles in France. 
Moreover, women of fashion solicited places 
about her person, among them a certain 
Madame Saint Benoit, who became first 
lady of the bed-chamber, and remained with 
her during the whole period of her reign, 
her former maid, the faithful and beloved 
Henriette, contenting herself with the 
second place of honor. 

A few days after the installation of the 
new Favorite, Lebel died in such a sudden 
manner that many believed him to have 
been poisoned. This was probably not the 
case, but it is certain that he became 
alarmed at the king's infatuation for his 
new mistress, and took it upon himself to 
explain to the monarch that she was not 



76 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

worthy of his regard ; that she was not of 
noble or even of decent birth, and that she 
had hed in representing herself to be a 
married woman, whereas she was merely 
the latest sweetheart of Count Du Barry. 
So incensed did King Louis become at this 
frankness on the part of his faithful ser- 
vitor that he actually threatened him with 
a pair of tongs and drove him from his 
presence, bidding him see that the lady 
was supplied with a husband without de- 
lay. It is not improbable that the excite- 
ment of this interview had much to do 
with Lebel's sudden death, but he lived 
long enough to transmit his sovereign's last 
command to Count Du Barry, and he, in 
his turn, hastened to write to his brother 
Guillaume, a young officer who was living 
at the family home in Toulouse, and ap- 
prised him of the brilliant marriage which 
he had arranged for him. 

Guillaume, who seems to have shared his 
elder brother's willingness to do anything 
that was likely to augment his revenues, 
hastened to Paris, bringing with him the 
power of attorney by which his mother 



A NEW SUN ON THE HORIZON 77 



^ 




authorized him, in accordance with French 
law, to contract marriage with such person 
as he might think fitting. The contract of 
marriage was immediately 
prepared, but it was deemed 
politic to delay the cere- 
mony for a short time 
in order that 
a new certificate '' 
of birth, less shameful than 
the real one quoted on a 
previous page, could be 
forged and substituted. 

In this document, 
which, with the conni- 
vance of persons high in 
power, was actually en- 
tered in the baptismal 
register of the parish of 
Vaucouleurs, Jeanette is 
described as the daughter of Jean Jacques 
Gomard de A^aubernier and Anne Becu, 
called Quantigny, and three years are taken 
from her age. 

These arrangements having been made, 
the contract was duly drawn up and signed, 



Orange woman. 



78 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

and on the first of September the marriage 
was celebrated. Immediately after the 
ceremony, the husband returned to Tou- 
louse, and there is every reason to believe 
that he went with well-filled pockets. Per- 
sons of his class did not do business merely 
for the sake of their health in those days. 
As for the bride, she returned to Versailles 
and took possession of Lebel's quarters, 
moving from them a short time later to the 
apartment that had just been vacated by 
the Princess Adelaide. These rooms were 
situated in the second story, conveniently 
near the apartments of the king, who could 
pass from one to the other without being 
seen. During the remainder of the year 
1768 the liaison was conducted in strict 
privacy, as the king was in deep mourning 
for the queen, who had recently died, and 
French etiquette forbade any public dem- 
onstration of affection until the end of a 
fitting period of grief 

That Louis XV was from the very first 
thoroughly infatuated with Jeanette Du 
Barry there can be no doubt. He loaded 
her with presents, allowed her to make un- 



A NEW SUN ON THE HORIZON 79 

limited drafts on his treasury, and cham- 
pioned her cause in the many vexatious 
quarrels which the jealousy of the other 
courtiers forced upon her. 

" How you all must have hated me in 
those days," she said, years after the king's 
death, while speaking to one of the great 
princesses of the realm. 

" Not at all, my dear," was the amiable 
reply. " It was not that we hated you, but 
that we all wanted your place." 

Jeanette Du Barry must have been a 
consummate actress, for while she was 
simulating an ardor for her lover that 
seemed fully as great as his own for her, 
she kept hjer senses about her to a degree 
that enabled her to make an estimate of 
his character that is well worth recording 
here. Nor does it read at all like the 
rhapsody of a love-sick young woman. 

" Louis XV, King of France, was one 
of those sentimental egotists who believed 
he loved the whole world, his subjects, and 
his family ; whilst in reality the sole en- 
grossing object was self Gifted with many 
personal and intellectual endowments which 



80 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

might have disputed the pahn with the 
most notable personages of the court, he 
was nevertheless devoured by ennui, which, 
by the way, he regarded as one of the 
necessary accompaniments of royalty. De- 
void of taste in literary matters, he despised 
all connected with belles-lettres and es- 
teemed men only in proportion to the 
number and richness of their armorial bear- 
ings. With him, M. de Voltaire ranked 
beneath the lowest country squire, and the 
very mention of a man of letters was terri- 
fying to his imagination, because it dis- 
turbed the current of his own ideas. 

"He revelled in the plenitude of power, 
yet felt dissatisfied with the mere title of 
king. He ardently desired to win renown 
as the first general of the age, and enter- 
tained the utmost jealousy of Frederick II 
of Prussia of whose exploits he spoke with 
undisguised spleen and ill-humor. The 
habit of commanding, and the prompt 
obedience he had always met with had 
long since palled upon his mind, and he 
cared nothing for what was so easily ob- 
tained. This satiety and listlessness were 




In Comedy Vein. 



A NEW SUN ON THE HORIZON 83 

by many attributed to a melancholy dis- 
position. He disliked any appearance of 
opposition to his will, not that he particu- 
larly resented the opposition, but that he 
knew his own weakness, and feared lest he 
should be compelled to make a show of 
a firmness which he knew he did not 
possess. 

" For the clergy he entertained the most 
superstitious veneration, and he feared God 
because he had a greater dread of the devil. 
In the hands of his confessor he believed 
was lodged absolute power to confer upon 
him the unlimited license to commit any 
and every sin. He greatly dreaded pam- 
phlets, satires, epigrams, and the opinion of 
posterity, and yet his conduct was that of 
a man who scoffs at the world's judgment." 

There is much truth in this intimate por- 
trait of the man who, for nearly sixty years, 
was the constitutional ruler of France. No 
woman could have found a more powerful 
protector than he was ; but his very power 
made the recipient of his favor a person to 
be hated, envied, and intrigued against by 
the other factions in the court. 



84 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

So it happened that while there were 
many who, hke the Due de Richeheu, 
sought to ingratiate themselves with the 
Favorite, and to warm themselves in the 
rays of the new sun that had arisen on 
the horizon of Versailles, there were others 
who ranged themselves against her in open 
or secret hostility. Chief among these 
were the then prime minister, the Due de 
Choiseul, and his sister, the Duchesse de 
Grammont. Between this powerful couple 
and the Favorite there was carried on a 
war which eventually brought about the 
dismissal of the prime minister from office, 
and ceased only with the death of the king 
and the downfall of his mistress. 

The real cause of this enmity may be 
traced to the endeavors of the duchess, 
aided by her powerful brother, to obtain a 
mastery over the king, and secure for her- 
self the post which had been vacant since 
the days of La Pompadour. In further- 
ance of this excellent project, the Due de 
Choiseul had exercised eternal vigilance in 
regard to the moral welfare of the king, 
and had taken pains to nip in the bud any 



A NEW SUN ON THE HORIZON 85 

indication of a passion that seemed likely 
to be lasting or serious. 

On one occasion, about a year after 
Madame de Pompadour s death, an attempt 
was made by a court faction hostile to his 
own to install in the vacant place a young 
woman named Mademoiselle d'Esparbes, 
who had the most beautiful hands in Ver- 
sailles, and who had charmed the aesthetic 
fancy of the sovereign by the dainty grace 
with which she employed her slender, beau- 
tiful fingers in picking cherries. She had 
already been honored with a suite of apart- 
ments at Marly, and all seemed to be going 
well, when Monsieur de Choiseul, who had 
been patiently biding his time, stopped her 
one day on the grand staircase, and, in the 
presence of the whole court, chucked her 
under the chin and said brutally : " How 
is your business going on, my girl ? " 

These words literally killed the whole 
scheme, for after this open affront the 
king, whose interest in the woman was 
very slight, did not deem it prudent to go 
any further, and a few days later her apart- 
ment was taken away from her, and she 



86 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

herself received a letter under the royal 
seal, exempting her from paying court to 
the king, and commanding her to retire to 
the home of her father, the Marquis de 
Lussan, at Montauban. 

After this episode the Due de Choiseul 
felt tolerably sure that his own place was 
secure, and that it might be possible for him 
to install his sister in the place that she 
coveted. But Louis XV was tired of the 
government of political women. He had 
had enough of that sort of thing during 
the Pompadour reign, and had long since 
declared that no earthly power would 
induce him to take a mistress from the 
ranks of the nobility. But in spite of his 
increasing coldness toward her, the duchess 
continued in her efforts to charm him in a 
manner so open as to excite the raillery of 
the entire court circle. 

The intrigue with Du Barry, she and her 
brother at first regarded with contempt. 
They thought that they saw in it the cun- 
ning handiwork of their natural enemy, 
Richelieu. And so both of them held 
aloof from the newcomer. Very soon, 



A NEW SUN ON THE HORIZON 87 

however, the prime minister reahzed that 
a new power had arisen that might, in the 
end, prove a formidable rival to his own. 
He saw that he had no longer to deal 
with a passing caprice on the part of the 
king, but with a passion that had taken a 
strong hold on the royal heart and was 
growing stronger, instead of weaker, every 
day. 

It was a serious discovery for him, but 
to his proud sister, who saw the place that 
she had coveted for herself filled by a mere 
waif from a milliner shop, it was maddening 
beyond her powers of endurance. 

In a rage, she stirred her brother on to 
open hostilities, and made war herself by 
means of pamphlets, street ballads, vulgar 
verses and satirical newspaper articles. She 
raked up the past life of the Favorite, 
spiced it liberally with her own imagina- 
tion, — which appears to have been not over 
clean, — and had it set to music under the 
name of " La Bourbonnaise." She even 
imbued Voltaire, who had always been an 
ally of her brother, with the idea for the 
pamphlet, " The King of Bedlam," in which 



88 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

his wit passed over Madame Du Barry and 
found a target in tlie king himself. 

Fully as bitter in their hostilities as the 
Duchesse de Grammont, although they did 
not deign to show it as she did, were the 
royal princesses, the daughters of the king. 
This is scarcely to be wondered at, espe- 
cially when we consider the recent death 
of their mother. Nor is it surprising to 
learn that these ladies united in vigorous 
remonstrance when their father appro- 
priated for the use of his new love the 
apartments which belonged to his daughter, 
the Princess Adelaide. 

That Madame Du Barry was able to 
stem the tide of opposition that was raised 
against her during the early part of her 
reign, seems little short of marvellous when 
we consider her low origin, previous man- 
ner of life, and utter inexperience in the 
ways of a royal court. Her success, though 
due largely -to her own good sense and 
good nature, probably owed a good deal to 
the constant care with which her brother- 
in-law. Count Jean, watched over her from 
his home in Paris, and gave her counsel 



A NEW SUN ON THE HORIZON 91 



that helped her over every difficulty she 
encountered. Although thoroughly de- 
based, he was nevertheless a man of talent 
and energy, and he knew too, that the 
services which he could 
render his former mis- 
tress, who in her new 
life could not distinguish 
friend from enemy, were 
of such value that she 
could well afford to pay 
him handsomely for 
them. 

Between 
Versailles 
and Paris a 
corps of mes- 
sengers was 
in continual 
service, car- 
rying from 
MadameDu 
Barry letters 
of inquiry 
regarding 

even L n e objects seen in the milliner's shop 




92 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

smallest details and bringing in return the 
most explicit and minute instructions from 
her crafty and experienced brother-in-law. 

It is doubtful if the actress ever studied 
the great part in which she has won such 
signal triumphs on the mimic scene any 
more conscientiously and carefully than 
this young shop-girl did that of the extraor- 
dinary one that she was called upon to 
play at such short notice and with so little 
experience. Certainly both women were 
supremely fortunate in the matter of a 
stage director. 

So well did the king's Favorite follow 
the instructions of her director, so much 
native aptitude did she display for her call- 
ing, that during the critical year which 
elapsed between her first meeting with the 
king and her formal presentation at court 
she did not once gratify her enemies by 
making herself ridiculous. 

Moreover, she had found time and oppor- 
tunity to strengthen her claims to a like 
recognition by means of a none too accu- 
rate genealogy of the Du Barry family, 
which had been prepared in England, under 



A New Fancy. 



A NEW SUN ON THE HORIZON 93 

the inspiration of the same brain that had 
conceived the idea of the false baptismal 
entry, and claiming for the Du Barry's 
blood-kinship with the famous Irish family 
of Barrymore. She had also obtained from 
the hand of her former lover some pam- 
phlets reflecting on the character of her 
arch enemies, the Duchesse de Grammont 
and her brother the Due de Choiseul. 





CHAPTER V 




PRESENTED AT COURT 

ER position in the per- 
sonal regard of the king 
having become secure, 
the Favorite's next step 
was to secure the much- 
coveted and all-impor- 
tant honor of a formal 
presentation at his court. And in this, 
as in all other matters affecting her inter- 
ests, she received the support and counsel 
of her brother-in-law. 

To a woman in her anomalous position, 
this formal presentation at court was a 
matter of vital importance. Without it she 
was merely the king's mistress, the fancy 
of a passing moment, and, like others who 
hang on princes' favor, liable to be set 
aside the very instant that a fresh face 
found favor in the royal eyes. 



PRESENTED AT COURT 95 

Once presented at court, however, she 
had the right to Hve openly in the palace 
of her sovereign, to take her place in the 
world as a woman whose position in soci- 
ety was assured, to entertain ambassadors, 
statesmen and generals, give orders to the 
ministers, — in short, to have a voice in all 
matters of state. 

From the very first Jean Du Barry had 
urged her not to cease in her efforts to 
secure for herself this distinction. He 
knew far better than she did how much it 
meant to a woman playing such a fascinat- 
ing and hazardous game as the one in which 
she had taken a hand. When she seemed 
content with liberal presents of money and 
jewelry, when she expressed perfect confi- 
dence in the continuance of royal favor, 
simply because she found herself lodged in 
apartments that corrimunicated easily with 
those of the king, it was Jean Du Barry 
who spurred her on to fresh exertions by 
showing her that all this meant no more 
than the capricious love of a man who had 
been lavishing money and diamonds on 
women all his life. 



96 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

Of course this presentation was opposed 
by a very strong court faction. The pow- 
erful Due de Choiseul sought in every 
possible way to prevent it, as did his sister, 
the Duchesse de Grammont. The daugh- 
ters of the king, M^ho had been inexpressi- 
bly mortified by their father's open lack of 
respect for the memory of his dead queen, 
were no less bitter in their opposition, and 
in their efforts they found many powerful 
allies in the most exalted court circles. 
These and other persons of the highest 
importance formed what seemed like an 
impenetrable wall about the throne of 
France. So great indeed was the opposi- 
tion from within the ranks of his own fam- 
ily, as well as from those of his advisers, 
that the king, who seems to have had rare 
skill in the difficult art of keeping out of 
family rows, summoned his grand almoner. 
Monsieur de Vauguyon, and addressed him 
as follows : " La Vauguyon, you are a man 
of a thousand. Listen attentively to me. 
I wish much that the Countess Du Barry 
should be presented ; I wish it, and that 
too in defiance of all that can be said and 



PRESENTED AT COURT 99 

done. My indignation is excited before- 
hand against all those who shall raise any 
obstacle to it. Do not fail to let niy 
daughters know that if they do not comply 
with my wishes, I will let my anger fall 
heavily on all persons by whose counsels 
they may be persuaded ; for I only am 
master and I will prove it to the last. 
These are your credentials, my dear duke, 
add to them what you may think fitting. 
I will bear you out in anything." 

The prelate undertook this delicate com- 
mission, having first obtained from Madame 
Du Barry her promise that the weight of 
her influence would at all times be thrown 
in favor of the clerical party, to which he of 
course belonged, and not with their natural 
enemies, the philosophers or free-thinkers. 

Armed with this assurance, he soon ob- 
tained from Madame Louise, the most pious 
and obedient of the king's daughters, her 
promise that she would yield to her father's 
wishes. The princesses Sophie, Adelaide, 
and Victoire he found less complacent, and 
it was only by the exercise on his part of 
the most adroit diplomacy and the most 

L.ofC. 



100 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

convincing and pious eloquence tliat he 
succeeded in persuading them that it was 
their duty, as daughters of the king, to 
set an example in obedience. Finally the 
four sisters met at the house of JMadame 
Adelaide and decided that as the king had 
expressed himself so positively on the sub- 
ject of the presentation they would receive 
his mistress with every mark of courtesy. 

The almoner hastened to IMadame Du 
Barry and informed her of his success. 
Her joy was so great that she embraced 
him with the greatest warmth and a few 
days later sent him a Chinese mandarin, . 
fashioned in porcelain, on whose finger was 
placed a jewelled ring worth nearly forty 
thousand francs. 

The opposition of the royal princesses 
having been silenced, the next difficulty 
that lay in the path that led towards the 
throne was that of obtaining a sponsor. 
The etiquette of the French court, very 
strict in this as in all other respects, de- 
manded that every M^oman presented should 
have as a sponsor some other woman of 
title who was herself a member of the 



PRESENTED AT COURT 101 

king's court. Ordinarily, it was not diffi- 
cult for a candidate to obtain, from among 
her own friends, a noblewoman qualified 
for the post of sponsor and willing to 
assume it. In the case of Madame Du 
Barry, however, the opposition was so 
strong and her notoriety so great that 
every woman who was approached on the 
subject either refused on one pretence or 
another, or else demanded for her services 
a sum so exorbitant as to stagger even such 
an extravagant woman as the Favorite. 
One lady who was applied to demanded a 
large sum of money for herself, the com- 
mand of a regiment for her son, and for 
her husband, a government and the Order 
of the Holy Ghost. Another, the Mar- 
quise de Castellane of that day, stipulated 
that she should receive a gift of half a 
million francs and be created a duchess. 

A presenteuse was found at last, thanks 
to the indefatigable energy of the Due 
de Richelieu, in the person of a certain 
^ladame de Beam, who was a woman of 
great avarice and a chronic litigant as well. 
This lady was at this time one of the par- 



102 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

ties in a law-suit involving several hundred 
thousand francs, and Madame Du Barry's 
influence with the chancellor of the king- 
dom was a consideration that had great 
weight with her. In addition to this in- 
fluence, she demanded for herself a hundred 
thousand francs and a station in the royal 
household, and for her son, the command 
of a regiment. 

Even when her demands had been ac- 
ceded to, this avaricious countess had the 
effi-ontery to require the king's written 
promise, and it was only by an artful strat- 
egy on the part of Madame Du Barry that 
the matter was finally adjusted. 

But although a sponsor had been found, 
the opposition of the Choiseul party was 
not silenced, and it was not until the mis- 
tress made a personal and tearful appeal to 
the king, aided by the influence of her 
friend the Due de Richelieu, that that 
weak and vacillating monarch consented to 
the ceremony which should give her once 
and for all the status that she desired. 

The presentation took place on the 2 2d 
of April, 1769, and on that day vast num- 



PRESENTED AT COURT 103 

bers of people went out from Paris to 
Versailles to witness the passage of the 
Favorite's carriage to the court. The ex- 
citement and interest manifested in this 
purely ceremonial act is not difficult to 
understand when we remember that to 
the clerical party, against which the Choi- 
seul ministry had always arraigned itself, 
Madame Du Barry was not a mere courte- 
san, the toy of an indolent, pleasure-loving 
prince, but a veritable Moses sent for the 
salvation of the chosen people of the 
Church. In her, strange as it may seem 
to us of a different civilization, were centred 
to a large extent the hopes of the Jesuits, 
for had she not already given assurance 
through the grand almoner, who pleaded 
her cause with the royal princesses, that her 
influence would be thrown with that party ? 
Therefore thousands of people gathered at 
the gates of the park in Versailles and 
waited patiently for the appearance of the 
carriage with her well-known livery. 

Within the palace the king, nervous and 
ill at ease, stood waiting her coming, won- 
dering at the delay, for the hour had long 



104 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

since passed, and annoyed by the clamor 
that was borne to his ears from the throngs 
about the gates. Choiseul, standing beside 
him, grew more and more exultant as each 
passing minute diminished the chance of 
the presentation taking place that day. 
On the other side of the royal person stood 
Richelieu in his capacity of first gentle- 
man, watching through the window with 
the corner of his eye and hoping, almost 
against hope, that the familiar equipage 
would come within his range of vision. 

" What means all this uproar ? Why are 
all those people gathered about the gates ? " 
demanded the king of his minister. 

" Sire," replied Choiseul, in sarcastic tones 
that were almost jubilant, " the people have 
learned that Madame Du Barry is to be 
presented to-day, and they have hurried 
here from every point of the compass in 
order that they may at least witness her 
arrival, as they are not able to be at the re- 
ception which your Majesty will give her." 

A moment later Louis XV glanced at 
the clock, and then opened his lips for the 
purpose of countermanding or postponing 



PRESENTED AT COURT 



105 



the presentation, but at this instant Riche- 
lieu caught sight of the Favorite's carriage 
crossing the great court and exclaimed, 
" Sire, here is Madame Du Barry." 




Sedan chair. 

Woman-like, and knowing, too, the vast 
importance of looking her best that day, 
she had lingered too long at her dressing- 
table. But, if the chronicles of that period 
are to be believed, the results were well 
worth the sacrifice of time. For neither 
canvas nor marble has ever fitly repro- 



106 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

duced those charming seductions of form 
and that exquisite beauty of face in which 
were reahzed the ideal of eighteenth cen- 
tury beauty. There was one portrait of 
her, however, which, though it but faintly 
pictured her charms, nevertheless moved 
Voltaire to exclaim, " The original was 
made for the gods ! " 

Her hair was long, silky, curling like the 
hair of a child, and blonde with an exquisite 
auburn tint. Her eyebrows and eyelashes 
were dark and curly, and beneath them the 
blue ey«s, which one seldom saw quite 
open, looked out with coquettish sidelong 
glances. The nose was small and finely 
cut, and the mouth a perfect Cupid's bow. 
The neck, the arms, her feet and her hands 
reminded one of ancient Greek statuary, 
while her complexion was that of a rose- 
leaf steeped in milk. She carried with her 
a delicious atmosphere of intoxicating, vic- 
torious, amorous youth. 

Her costume was a triumph of the dress- 
maker's art and was of the kind called by 
the women of her century " a fighting cos- 
tume." Diamonds worth 150,000 francs. 



PRESENTED AT COURT 109 

the king's gift of the day before, still fur- 
ther adorned her and contributed to a 
beauty that was so radiant and dazzling 
that even her bitterest enemies were able 
to comprehend the power that she exercised 
over the king. The Countess de Beam, 
also gorgeously attired, appeared with her, 
delighted to have a share in the pomp and 
splendor of the occasion. The royal prin- 
cesses, true to the promise given their 
father, received her with a degree of amia- 
bility and courtesy which carried conster- 
nation to the hearts of the Choiseul faction. 
They would not suffer her to kneel before 
them, but hastened to raise her in the 
most gracious manner when she began to 
perforin that act of homage. 

The king himself was even more gracious 
in his manner towards her. She had made 
a bet with him the day before, that he 
would not permit her to bend the knee to 
him, for he had threatened to permit her 
to fall at his feet without making the least 
effort to prevent it. Now, as he took her 
hand when she began to stoop before him, 
she exclaimed, " You have lost, sire." 



110 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

" How is it possible to preserve my dig- 
nity in the presence of so many graces ? " 
he exclaimed in a voice loud enough to be 
heard by those who stood near by. 

That evening Jeanette Du Barry enter- 
tained at her house a score of the highest 
dignitaries in the land, in the presence of 
whom the king embraced her warmly, say- 
ing : " Y^ou are a charming creature," a 
compliment which was quickly echoed on 
all sides, and the next day all Paris knew 
that her place by the king's left hand was 
permanent and secure. 

In the mere act of this presentation, in 
the cabals which favored or opposed it, in 
the great significance with which it was 
invested, and in the splendor of the function 
itself, there is material for a great drama. 
In the play of Uu Barrij, however, it is 
not touched upon. 





CHAPTER VI 



THE PETIT LEVEE 




I N the third act of his play 
the dramatist teaches 
the present generation, 
in a manner so vivid 
that no one can see it 
without carrying away 

a lasting recollection of 

it, what it meant to be the favorite of a 
Bourbon king a century and a half ago. 
In this act Madame Du Barry is shown 
in the bedroom of her apartments at Ver- 
sailles, holding one of thepetits levees which 
were of such ordinary occurrence in those 
days. By this time the presentation has 
taken place, her power is acknowledged by 
all, and there is no prince or princess of 
the blood royal, no woman of the haute 
noblesse, no dignitary of the church, state, 



112 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

or army who is above coming there to do 
her homage. 

To the student of history, this gathering 
in the bedchamber of the most talked-of 
Frenchwoman of her day is a scene of the 
deepest interest. She is still in the heart 
of her quarrel with Choiseul, and her visi- 
tors this morning are many of them from 
tlie ranks of her own personal supporters. 

The most distinguished of these guests, 
next to the king himself, is the polished 
and sin- worn old diplomat, the Due de 
Richelieu, who comes tripping in to pay 
his court to the Favorite with all the 
smirks and graces of a nobleman of the old 
regime. Accomplished as he is in the arts 
of the courtier, familiar by long experience 
and practice in the school of diplomacy, 
with the consummate and subtle art of mask- 
ing his feelings and intentions behind a face 
that smiles and gives no sign, he has not 
been clever enough to deceive the woman 
whose knowledge of court customs has been 
gained within a single twelvemonth. In 
the vernacular of to-day, she has " sized him 
up" long ago, and her impressions of his 



THE PETIT LEVEE 113 

character have been handed down to us 
in the following words : 

" This nobleman," she says, " when in 
his seventy-second year, had preserved all 
his former pretensions to notice. His suc- 
cess in so many love affairs — a success 
which he never could have merited — had 
rendered him celebrated. He was now a 
superannuated coxcomb, a wearisome and 
clumsy butterfly. When, however, he 
could be brought to exercise his sense by 
remembering that he was no longer young, 
he became fascinating beyond description, 
from the finished ease and grace of his 
manner and the polished and piquant style 
of his discourse. Still I speak of him as a 
mere man of outward show, for his attain- 
ments were superficial, and he possessed 
more of the jargon of a man of letters than 
the sound reality. He possessed a most 
ignoble turn of mind. All feelings of an 
elevated nature were wanting with him. 
A bad son, an unkind husband, and a worse 
father, he could scarcely be expected to 
become a steady friend. All whom he 
feared, he hesitated not to trample under- 



114 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

foot, and his favorite maxim was, ' We 
should never hesitate to set our foot upon 
the necks of all those who might in any 
way interfere with our progress.' ' Dead 
men tell no tales,' he would always add. 
Between himself and Voltaire, who called 
him the ' tyrant of the tennis court,' a strong 
personal enmity always existed." 

Another important visitor is JMonsieur de 
Maupeou, at that time the Lord Chancellor 
of the king, and of whom INladame Du 
Barry says : 

" Monsieur de Maupeou possessed one of 
those firm and superior minds, which, in 
spite of all obstacles, changes the face of 
Empires. Ardent, yet cool ; bold, but re- 
flective ; neither did the clamors of the 
populace astonish, nor obstacles arrest him. 
He went on in the direct path which his will 
chalked out. Quitting the magistracy, he 
became its most implacable enemy, and, 
after a deadly combat, he came ofl* con- 
queror. He felt that the moment had 
arrived for freeing royalty- from the chains 
which it had imposed upon itself. It was 
necessary, he has said to me a hundred 



THE PETIT LEVEE 117 

times, for the kings of France in past ages 
to have a popular power on which they 
could rely for the overturning of the feudal 
power. ' Before fifty years,' he said to me 
once, ' kings will be nothing in France, 
and parliaments will be everything.' As 
brave, personally, as a marshal of France, 
his enemies, and he had many, called him 
a coarse and quarrelsome man. Hated by 
all, he despised men in a body, and jeered 
at them individually. Insensible to the 
charms of our sex, he only thought of us 
casually and as a means of relaxation." 

Another notable figure at the petit levee 
is the Abbe Terray, the Minister of Fi- 
nance. This astute and utterly unprin- 
cipled politician was not slow in allying 
himself with the faction that gathered 
about the Favorite, and she, on her part, 
could not have found a more docile or use- 
ful supporter. As Controller- General of 
the Finances of the Kingdom, he literally 
held the purse-strings, and he was politic 
enough to loosen them whenever the king's 
mistress commanded. That he was fre- 
quently called upon to do so, may be 



118 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

inferred from the richness of the bedcham- 
ber and its furnishings, as well as from the 
fact that during the five years of her reign, 
JNIadame Du Barry's personal expenditures 
amounted to over twelve million livres, a 
sum of money whose purchasing capacity 
about equalled that of the same number of 
dollars at the present day. Her dress- 
maker's bill alone amounted to a quarter 
of a million livres a year, and she had 
already found that silver, even when it was 
the work of the very best craftsmen in 
France, was not good enough for her, and 
must be replaced by solid gold. There 
was a toilet service ordered in the same 
precious metal, and the government paid 
to Roettiers, the greatest carver of plate in 
France, the sum of fifteen hundred gold 
marks as an advance payment, before he 
would undertake the work. But scandal, 
caused by this piece of useless extrava- 
gance, put a stop to the work, and the gold 
toilet service was never finished. 

It is not unlikely that an understanding 
existed between JNIadame Du Barry and the 
Abbe Terray, through which the JNIinister 



THE PETIT LEVEE 119 

of Finance secured for himself a percentage 
of what he permitted her to squander. It 
is a matter of history that his mistress, 
known in fashionable Parisian circles by 
the name of La Sultane, received money, 
presumably in collijsion with the Abbe, 
for every act of favor or justice solicited 
from the department which he controlled. 
Indeed, this degraded creature and Madame 
Sabatin, the mistress of the Due de la 
Vrilliere, kept open shop for the sale of 
preferments of all kinds. 

The Count Jean Du Barry is also a visi- 
tor at the petit levee, nor is it surprising to 
see him in quest of money. The class of 
men to which he belongs is 
one that in all ages has found 
its chief support in the earn- 
ings of frail women. It is a 
class, by the way, which has 
not yet passed from off 
the face of the earth, and 
has its representatives in 
the good society of the 
present day as well as in 
the slums. Jean Du . 

Fwiiclt howl. 




120 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

Barry, who has always been known as a 
man of extravagant tastes, is now rapacious 
in his demand, and, from what we know 
of his character, we do not feel that the 
dramatist has strayed far from historical 
accuracy when he reveals him in the light 
of a blackmailer. 

His Eminence, the Papal Nuncio, is here 
too in the mimic scene, as he frequently 
was in the flesh when the real Madame 
Du Barry held her petit s levees in the great 
palace of ^^ersailles. Moreover he seems 
to be a trusted adviser, as well as a friend 
who lends the weight of his influence in 
her behalf in her quarrel with the king. 

Anotlier guest is the young girl of six- 
teen, the Princess Marie Antoinette, to 
whose memory clings the tragic pathos of a 
queen's martyrdom. 

" She appeared to me less beautiful and 
fair than pleasant and ladylike," says 
Madame Du Barry, in describing the im- 
pression made on her by this young prin- 
cess on her first arrival from Austria. 
" Her hair was of a reddish auburn, but 
her skin was of a dazzling white. She had 



THE PETIT LEVEE 121 

a beautiful forehead, a delicious set of teeth, 
a well-formed nose, and eyes full of vivac- 
ity and expression. Her air was majestic 
and dignified. She walked well ; her figure 
was well shaped, and her gestures were 
more free and unstudied than those of the 
princesses of the blood royal of France." 

This princess, however, did not have agood 
opinion of the Favorite, toward whom her 
conduct at first was so frigid that the 
king summoned the Austrian ambassador, 
Mercy- Argenteau, explained to him his 
wishes, and bade him use whatever influence 
he possessed to induce her to conform to 
them. The ambassador, alarmed at the 
prospect of anything like coolness between 
the two royal houses, and knowing how 
much trouble can be brought about by the 
obstinacy of one young woman, instantly 
despatched letters to his sovereign, the 
Empress Maria Theresa, in which he ex- 
plained to her the precise state of affairs at 
the French court. He described the in- 
fatuation of the king for the new Favorite, 
and took pains to relate the manner in 
which His Majesty showed his displeasure 



122 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

when the least shght was put upon her. 
In view of these conditions, he begged the 
empress to use her influence with her 
daughter, and persuade her to address a few 
civil words to a woman whom the king had 
honored by his regard. The empress saw 
the force of his argument, and wrote at 
once to her daughter, urging her to remem- 
ber what was due the king at whose court 
she was living. At last, in obedience to 
her mother, Marie Antoinette consented 
to receive the Favorite ; and statesmen, 
who had foreseen, as an outcome of her 
obstinacy possible trouble with Austria, 
breathed freely again. 

Whether or no the dauphiness ever 
overcame her feeling of repugnance toward 
Madame Du Barry to such an extent as to 
attend one of her petits levees, is a fact on 
which history throws but little light, so we 
may accept the picture as the dramatist has 
painted it for us. Certainly her presence 
in this scene lends a new interest to it. 

Denys, the faithful servant who follows 
Madame Du Barry's changing fortunes to 
their bitter end, is a character who really 



THE PETIT LEVEE 125 

existed, and who was deeply attached to 
his mistress. 

Another type of servitor was Zamore, 
the black dwarf, whom we see squatting on 
a rug beside the Favorite's bed. Creatures 
of this sort were frequently maintained in 
luxurious houses in those days, in Paris and 
in London as well. We encounter them, 
more than once, in the pictures which 
Hogarth painted of dissolute London life 
of exactly that time. Zamore received 
innumerable favors at the hands of JNIadame 
Du Barry and her royal lover, but, in the 
end, turned against her, and at her trial 
gave testimony which contributed mate- 
rially to her conviction. 

Madame Du Barry had received Zamore 
at the hands of the usually penurious Due 
de Richelieu, who turned him over to her, 
clad in his native garb of pleated grass and 
adorned with bracelets, earrings and neck- 
lace of solid gold, fashioned in barbaric style. 
He was a hideously ugly little savage with 
no more respect for persons than one 
would have looked for in a monkey. He 
was funny, however, in a rude simian way. 



126 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

and could make grimaces and distort his 
puny body in such a way as to set his 
mistress off into roars of laughter. He 
had scant respect for her visitors, and was 
wont to amuse himself and the company 
by snatching the wig from the head of 
some aged courtier, leaving his victim a 
bald target for the laughter of the rest. 

Pleasantries of this order seem to have 
been rather to the taste of his Most Chris- 
tian Majesty, Louis XV, for history tells 
us that once, in appreciation of some par- 
ticularly entrancing exhibition of this subtle 
and engrossing form of humor, he rewarded 
the young African with the post of gov- 
ernor of the Chateau of Louveciennes, an 
office carrying with it a salary of one thou- 
sand crowns. 

The Jeanette Du Barry who figures in 
this act has made distinct progress along 
her chosen path since we last saw her in 
the gambling house. It is true that she 
is, at heart, the same wanton, good-hearted, 
good-tempered young woman whose chief 
concern is for the pleasures of this life ; but 
now her destiny is assured, whereas her life 



THE PETIT LEVEE 127 

at the gaming house was merely a prehmi- 
nary glance into the brilliant, dissolute and 
luxurious world that lay before her. Now 
she has realized the very highest dream 
that any woman of her class ever dared 
to indulge in. The all-powerful king of 
France is madly in love with her, and 
there is nothing, from the dismissal of a 
minister to the price of a jewelled bauble, 
that she may not ask and receive at his 
hands. 

I declare that I can think of no more in- 
structive spectacle, nor of one better worth 
the consideration of a philosopher, than that 
of this pampered mistress reclining in her 
splendid bed, with the gorgeously capari- 
soned ape, Zamore, by her side, and minis- 
ters, prelates and royalty gathering to do 
her honor. 

The chief interest in this act is one of 
love, and here the inventive genius of the 
dramatist comes into play. Having taken 
the love between Jeanette Du Barry and 
Cosse-Brissac as the chief motive of his 
drama, Mr. Belasco avails himself of his 
dramatic license to assume that there was 



128 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

jealousy on the part of the king, and, logi- 
cally enough, that that jealousy resulted in 
a bitter quarrel between himself and his 
mistress. He shows us, too, how the heart 
of woman, even though that woman be the 
Favorite of a king, must break all artificial 
bonds imposed by high station and self- 
interest and rule her whole life. 

It is reasonable enough to assume that 
Jeanette Du Barry had more than one love 
affair beside that supreme one with the 
king, during the period of her reign. Hos- 
tile historians, who pander to that horror 
of immorality and taste for reading about 
it which characterizes Anglo Saxon virtue, 
ascribe to her a legion of sweethearts, and 
her own memoirs indicate that she was not 
altogether true to the king. 

Certainly she must have had plenty of 
idle time on her hands ; for, although she 
had succeeded Madame de Pompadour in 
the royal esteem, she was wise enough not 
to challenge comparison between herself 
and her predecessor by mixing too much 
in affairs of state. 

The Pompadour had been a woman of 



THE PETIT LEVEE 129 

distinct influence in the affairs of the world. 
Not only had she amused the king with 
her theatre, her conversation, her supper 
parties, and the brilliant men and women 
whom she gathered together for his enter- 
tainment, but she had also sought to reheve 
him of many of the serious duties of his 
exalted position. Her life had been one 
of constant intrigue ; of intimacy with 
cabinet ministers, statesmen and men of 
business ; of interest in politics, — in short, 
her role was one of actual power openly 
exercised. 

Madame Du Barry, on the other hand, 
was content with her position as Favorite, 
and, apart from her struggle with the 
Choiseuls and the various squabbles with 
the ladies of the court into which she was 
drawn, she did not figure prominently in 
the affairs of her time. Her chief delight 
was in spending money, and nowhere is the 
real history of the reign more accurately 
summed up than in the four volumes of 
her expense accounts purchased some years 
ago by the National Library. 

Like every woman of her class, she was 



130 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

passionately fond of the luxuries of life, and 
utterly heedless of their cost so long as 
there was some one to pay the bills for her. 
In these accounts we read of dresses cost- 
ing from one to ten thousand livres, of a 
watch costing nearly six thousand francs, 
of the same sum spent for the gildings on 
her bed, of lace that cost three or four 
thousand livres for each dress, of superb 
furniture, of bronzes, of everything, in 
short, that the richly decorative age of 
Louis XV could supply. 

The morning receptions in her bedcham- 
ber were not given over altogether to the 
visits of personages of distinction. It was 
at this time that tradesmen came to her 
with their newest and choicest wares, and 
workmen received instructions and sub- 
mitted to her the half-completed articles 
of beauty and utility which she had 
ordered, and which she loved to inspect 
from time to time. That her taste was 
good, is evident from such of her posses- 
sions as are still in existence. Nor is this 
to be wondered at, when we remember the 
great influence that the demi-monde has 



THE PETIT LEVEE 



133 



always exerted on the dress, jewelry and 
other ornaments of the polite world. 

The de Goncour Memoirs have this to 
say about Moreau's picture of a fete given 
by the Favorite in honor of her royal lover 
at her Chateau of Louveciennes, December 
27, 1771 : "Throughout the apartment, all 
white and gold, a vapor of light seems to 
rise from the lustres hanging in front of 
the mirror between the columns, shedding 
on them flashes to which other flashes 
respond in other mirrors, handfuls of flame 
which fling into the air four figures of 
women carved in marble by Pajou, Le 
Count, and Moineau, and standing on mar- 
ble socles with golden wreaths. Around 
the table, surrounded by curious lookers-on, 
behind the round backs of the armchairs and 



the clubs 
perukes, the 
servants, the 
ing disheSj 
keep coming 
and going rapidly, 
some in yellow 
straw liveries, others 



of the chattering guests' 

attendants, the 

persons carry- 




Slippers. 



134 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

in crimson velvet coats with facings, with 
blue collars and wristbands, with white 
boot-tops and white gaiters, three-cornered 
hats on their heads, and swords by their 
sides. You see even little Zamore in a 
turban with feathers, a rose-colored vest 
and breeches, gliding towards a lady who 
has doubtless left some bonbons on her 
plate. The crystal, the silver, the struc- 
ture representing an opera scene, which 
rises above the tablecloth, the cordons bleus, 
the diamonds, the smiles on the faces of 
the guests, all keep the table in a glow ; 
and in the brilliant light shed around them 
is seen, by the side of Madame Du Barry's 
pretty countenance, the handsome, noble 
face of Louis XV." 

There is more than a suggestion of all 
this in the superb scene which constitutes 
the fourth act of Mr. Belasco's play, — the 
act in which the highest point of dramatic 
interest is attained. It is in this act, too, 
that the dramatist touches the deepest and 
most significant note in his entire work. 

It is not easy to convey, in mere words, 
an adequate idea of the splendid picture of 



THE PETIT LEVEE 135 

luxury that is set before us here under the 
rays of a smiUng harvest moon. Up and 
down the marble steps and across the stage, 
ambassadors, noblemen, and court ladies 
come and go, laughing gayly and with no 
thought save for the caprice or intrigue or 
ambition of the moment. Opera-dancers 
whirl and pirouette on tiptoe for the en- 
tertainment of the guests ; clowns, all in 
M^hite, come somersaulting across the floor ; 
tables are spread in sumptuous fashion ; a 
huge bowl of flaming brandy punch is 
served, and the guests amuse themselves 
by throwing about illuminated balls. At 
a signal from the mistress, servants, bearing 
a score of rich candelabra, come upon the 
scene, and the stage is lit up with that real 
candlelight which electricity cannot coun- 
terfeit. 

Never, perhaps, has our stage presented 
such a luxurious and gorgeous spectacle as 
this. But beneath it all there is an omi- 
nous note that we, whose vision has been 
made clear with the light of after-knowl- 
edge, cannot help seeing. The writing is 
on the wall, but there is no Daniel to 



136 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

interpret it. The keen, glittering knife 
that the actress sees in fancy from the 
moment when she first comes on the stage, 
is hanging over a score of those bewigged 
and bepowdered heads. 

Valois, the young revolutionary, has 
already been brought in by the guards, 
and, before he can be taken away to execu- 
tion, has contrived to fling in the faces of 
his captors, a word of defiant warning ; but 
they give him no heed. Now, however, 
from without the gates, comes the noise of 
angry mutterings and discontent, for the 
people, starved and over-taxed to support 
all this riotous waste, are clamoring for 
bread. Their murmurings reach the ears 
of Louis the Well Beloved, and he comes 
striding out of his palace to demand its 
cause. 

*' Am I king or not, that this rabble 
should disturb my pleasure ? " he cries 
haughtily. And which one of us is there 
so dull and devoid of imagination as not 
to catch a glimpse of the gleaming knife 
conjured up by his words ? 

The soldiers go out to disperse the mob, 



THE PETIT LEVEE 



137 



and their clamor ceases ; the distant roll 
of the drums tells us that the name of 
Valois has been written in his own blood 
upon the long roll of those who have died 
for principle ; the king and his bejewelled 
mistress again lead the court in the mad 
hunt after pleasure, but that clamor at the 
outer gates is one that will not down. A 
powdered head will fall for every drop of 
Valois blood that has been shed to-night. 






CHAPTER VII 

A PRIME MINISTER'S DOWNFALL 

jN the month of July of 
the year 1769, Su* Hor- 
ace Walpole writes as 
follows: "Well! I am 
going to a quiet little 
town where they have 
had nothing but one 
woman to talk of for this twelvemonth, — 
I mean Paris. Madame Du Barry gains 
ground, and yet JNIonsieur de Choiseul car- 
ries all his points. He has taken Corsica, 
bought Sweden, made a pope, got the 
Czarina drubbed by the Turks, and has 
restored the Parliament of Bretagne, in 
spite of the Due D'Aiguillon, — for revenge 
can make so despotic and ambitious a man 
as Choiseul even turn patriot, — and yet 
at this moment I believe he dreads my 




3 



e 



A PRIME MINISTER'S DOWNFALL 141 

Lord Chatham more than Madame Du 
Barry." 

Time has shown, however, that the great 
minister who was at one time the virtual 
master of France had more to fear from 
the French courtesan than from the Eng- 
lish statesman. The struggle between him- 
self, egged on by his sister, the Duchesse de 
Grammont, on the one side, and the Favo- 
rite, aided by her own faction, on the other, 
resulted at last in the dismissal of the min- 
ister. Before this final catastrophe, how- 
ever, occurred a contretemps between the 
two women that may be said to have served 
as a prelude to his downfall. 

As may be easily believed, the duchess 
was one of the first to pay court to the 
dauphiness, Marie Antoinette, on her ar- 
rival at Versailles, and so skilful was she 
in the art of making herself agreeable, that 
the princess conceived a strong liking for 
her, and consulted her on innumerable sub- 
jects relating to her life at court. 

Now it is related that this young princess 
was so innocent in regard to worldly wicked- 
ness, that she once artlessly asked who Mad- 



142 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

ame Du Barry was, and what her precise 
status was in the entourage of Louis XV. 
It is not hkely that the Duchesse de Gram- 
mont, who had perhaps been waiting for a 
convenient opportunity to express herself, 
permitted the future Queen of France to 
remain longer in the dark concerning the 
character and antecedents of her grand- 
father's mistress. Possibly she was one of 
those raconteurs who, as the Irish say, 
" never let a story go out without a cocked 
hat and a cane." Certain it is that noth- 
ing could equal the abhorrence with which 
Marie Antoinette regarded the Favorite, 
and the latter was not slow to attribute 
this feeling to the efforts of her arch enemy, 
the duchess. She complained to the king 
again and again, but her lover did not like 
to be drawn into quarrels not his own, and 
it was not until the duchess affronted the 
woman whom she detested in his presence, 
and in such a manner that he felt himself 
aggrieved, that he exerted his authority. 

It was at a moment when both ladies 
were on their way to a levee held by the 
dauphin, and the duchess, while trying to 



A PRIME MINISTER'S DOWNFALL 143 

pass the other, set her foot upon her train 
in such a way as to tear it to tatters, after 
which, without a word of apology, she went 
on her way laughing loudly. It is difficult 
to imagine what Madame Du Barry would 
not have done to the duchess if she had not 
chanced to read in the face of the king, 
who had been a witness of the affair, an 
expression of rage and offended dignity 
which told her that she could safely leave 
the task of avenging her outraged feelings 
in his hands. 

That very day the king summoned the 
Duchesse de Grammont to his presence, 
sternly rebuked her for what she had done, 
and then banished her from his court for a 
period of two years. Even the remon- 
strances and entreaties of her brother failed 
to have any effect, and the next day the 
duchess departed, and the polite world 
realized that Madame Du Barry's influ- 
ence with the king was even greater than 
had been believed. 

If it had not been for the persistence of 
Monsieur D'Aiguillon and others who, like 
himself, were influenced by their own per- 



144 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

sonal ambition, it is doubtful if Madame 
Du Barry would have persisted in working 
to obtain the overthrow of the Due de 
Choiseul. The triumph over his sister was 
enough to satisfy a woman of her light, 
easy-going nature who had no desire to be 
dragged from her toilet-table and the mat- 
ters which were of serious moment to her, 
to take part in political cabals which she 
imperfectly understood and for which she 
cared but little. 

At the very outset of her career at Ver- 
sailles she had diligently paid court to the 
great minister, to whom she wrote amiably 
and in the humble tone of one who seeks 
the friendship and regard of a superior. 
She interested herself on behalf of his 
brother, the Comte de Stainville, whom she 
permitted to secure the reversion of the 
Governorship of Strasburg, and she even 
went so far as to ignore the contemptuous 
attitude of the Duchesse de Grammont and 
the fierce war of insulting ballads, pam- 
phlets, and epigrams which the Choiseuls, 
both brother and sister, waged against her. 
Moreover, she did her best to make the 



The Favorite of Royalty. 



A PRIME MINISTER'S DOWNFALL 145 

minister understand that her influence with 
the king was such as to make her a person- 




Screen and toilet table. 

age of far greater influence than himself, 
and she warned him that if he continued 

10 



146 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

to struggle against her, he must inevitably 
get the worst of it. 

Meanwhile the exiled duchess was trav- 
elhng through France under pretence of 
health-seeking, and busying herself with 
the various parliamentary leaders whom 
she met on the way. Naturally enough 
the D'Aiguillon faction took it upon them- 
selves to see that the king was informed 
in regard to everything that the roving 
duchess did and said, and although this 
knowledge made him cool towards the 
adviser in whose talents he firmly believed, 
nevertheless he continued to consult him, 
to work with him, and to invite him to eat 
and drink with him. 

All this having been made known to 
D'Aiguillon by his faithful pensioner, he 
redoubled his efforts with the Favorite, and 
besought her, as she valued her own power 
at court, to use every art that she possessed 
to extort from the king the lettre de cachet 
which should send the Due de Choiseul 
into ignominious exile. 

Never before, perhaps, did the mistress 
of a Bourbon king work with less zest 




^ 
^ 

^ 






A PRIME MINISTER'S DOWNFALL 149 

and malevolence for the banishment of a 
prime minister than did Madame Du Barry 
for that of Choiseul. She was kept at 
her work entirely by the persistency of 
D'Aiguillon, who teased her night and day, 
trying to interest her in his own ambitions 
and hates, and seeking by every means in 
his power to instil into her soft heart and 
easy-going disposition some of the poison 
of his own vindictiveness. 

Roused at last by the ceaseless prompt- 
ings of the ambitious D'Aiguillon, and the 
strong pressure brought to bear on her by 
everybody who had anything whatever to 
gain by Choiseul's fall, she began to harass 
her royal lover, and more than once used 
her blandishments with such effect that 
the lettre de cachet was actually written at 
night, only to be torn up in the morning 
when sober sense banished the fumes of 
wine from the royal brain. It was not, 
however, until the arts of political intrigue 
had been nearly exhausted that the party 
of the opposition found a mode of attack 
which compelled the king to the belief that 
it was necessary for him to take speedy 



150 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

and definite action. Choiseul had always 
sought to impress the king with the idea 
that his highest ambition for France was 
to keep her at peace with all the rest of 
the world. Against this impression the 
opposition skilfully directed their forces of 
attack by circulating the rumor that the 
prime minister was really endeavoring to 
restore his waning prestige by involving his 
country in war. In proof of this, they 
declared that he was trifling with the con- 
fidence of Spain, and at the same time 
intriguing against England. The king 
well knew that a very few weeks before 
his prime minister had actually placed on 
the council table the scheme for a descent 
on England which had been prepared 
under the direction of Monsieur de Broglie 
in the year 1766, and had himself brought 
forward witnesses to assure the king of its 
practicability. 

The confidence of Louis XV in his 
minister having thus been shaken, JNIadame 
Du Barry's turn arrived, and she, availing 
herself of a favorable moment, told him 
that if he wished to know the truth in 



A PRIME MINISTER'S DOWNFALL 151 

regard to the negotiations with Spain, 
he had only to send for the Abbe de 
la Ville, M. de Choiseul's clerk, who 
was thoroughly familiar with the whole 
matter. 

Now this Abbe de la Ville had begun 
life as a Jesuit, and had left that order to be- 
come a secular priest. When the great 
Fenelon went to Holland as ambassador, 
he accompanied him as the instructor of 
his children ; but in a very short time his 
taste for intrigue and diplomacy made him 
a person of consequence in the eyes of 
the ambassador, and he became secretary 
to the embassy, from which post he was 
subsequently recalled to take the posi- 
tion of chief clerk in the office of Foreign 
Affairs. 

Accustomed as he was to having a voice 
in all matters, great and small, the Abbe de 
la Ville had been much chagrined through 
the Due de Choiseul's habit of keeping 
his own counsel, and of writing even the 
most trivial of despatches in his own hand. 
The D'Aiguillon faction knew therefore 
that he could be depended on to support 



152 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

any measure aimed at the downfall of a 
minister who despised his counsel and his 
experience, and actually stood in the way 
of his advancement. 

On the 21st of December, 1770, the 
abbe was summoned with much secrecy to 
the king's cabinet, and asked, in the pres- 
ence of Madame Du Barry, what the Due 
de Choiseul's intentions were in regard to 
Spain. 

To this he made answer that the de- 
spatches of the prime minister had not 
been shown to him, but that if His Majesty 
desired to learn for himself what they con- 
tained, he had only to order his minister 
to write a letter to the King of Spain, as- 
suring him of King Louis's desire for 
peace and determination to avoid war at 
all costs. 

" If Monsieur de Choiseul really desires 
peace, he will do this at once," said the Abbe 
de la Ville ; " but if he refuses on one pre- 
text or another, it may be taken as evidence 
that he desires war." 

King Louis repaired at once to the Coun- 
cil Chamber, and ordered Monsieur de 



A PRIME MINISTER'S DOWNFALL 155 

Choiseul to write a letter to the King of 
Spain assuring him of the peaceful inten- 
tions of his royal brother of France. Now 
the prime minister had, as the D'Aiguillon 
party well knew, just sent a courier to 
Spain with a conciliatory letter, and there- 
fore he replied to the king, saying that 
before writing again it would be best to 
await an answer to the letter which he had 
just sent. Thereupon the king arose and 
left the chamber without another word and 
in a manner that showed that his anger 
had been aroused. 

Two days later, after signing a state 
paper, the king threw the pen angrily on 
the table, instead of giving it back to the 
Due de Choiseul, who had handed it to 
him. This sign of displeasure towards 
his prime minister was noticed by those 
present, so that the court was by no means 
surprised to learn, two days later, of the 
minister's downfall. 

The letti^e de cachet in the king's hand- 
writing which was delivered by the Due 
de la Vrilliere to the minister was couched 
in the following words : 



156 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

I order my cousin, the Due de Choiseul, to 
place his resignation of the post of Secretary of 
State in the hands of the Due de la Vrilliere and 
to withdraw to Chantellout until there is a fresh 
order from me. Louis. 

At Versailles this 24th of December, 1770. 

The victory won, the Favorite showed 
not the least particle of malice toward the 
statesman whom she had helped to depose. 
On the contrary, when the malevolent 
D'Aiguillon sought to deprive him of 
his post of Colonel- General of the Swiss 
Guards without any indemnity, Madame 
Du Barry used her influence with the king 
against this scheme, and never rested in her 
personal solicitations until she had induced 
her lover to bestow upon the fallen min- 
ister a hundred thousand crowns in money 
and a pension of sixty thousand livres. 





CHAPTER VIII 




THE WAGES OF SIN 

I HE wages of sin is 
death," and no man 
ever received payment 
for a long life of self- 
ishness, cruelty and 
sensuality in such hid- 
eous coin as that meted 
out to His Most Christian Majesty, Louis 
XV of France. 

Death came to him in its most terrible 
form in the spring of 1774, after a series of 
warnings that had begun more than a year 
before in a sermon preached in the chapel 
in Versailles during Holy Week by the 
Abbe de Beauvais in which he flagellated 
the iniquities practised at court, and even 
dared to hint at the turpitudes of the king 
himself in a Biblical allusion concerning 



158 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

the sensual indulgence of Solomon. Some 
weeks later the same young priest, who 
had now gained the protection of the 7t- 
ligeuse daughter of the king, IVIadame 
Louise, preached a sermon on death which 
made a profound impression on the worn- 
out monarch in whose breast remorse was 
already beginning to assert itself. 

In this sermon the courageous and truth- 
telling young abbe recalled to the king's 
memory the death of the Duke of Bur- 
gundy, of the dauphin and dauphiness, of 
the queen, of his mistresses — whom he had 
the grace not to name — in short, of all 
those who had been nearest and dearest to 
him ; and he gave him to understand that 
his turn had long since come, and that the 
Reaper stood waiting, sickle in hand, for 
his harvest. And the king, listening to 
these ghastly warnings, reflected with a 
keen sense of dread that he was at that 
time in his sixty -third year — a period re- 
garded as one of unusual fatality to men of 
his mode of life. 

The year 1774 came round, bringing 
with it several happenings that served to 




<3 



«3 






THE WAGES OF SIN 161 

upset the equanimity of the sovereign and 

of the courtesan to whom he clung closer 

and closer as the months rolled on. Early 

in the year the Genoese ambassador, whom 

the king was accustomed to see every day 

of his life, died suddenly. 

D'Aimentieres followed 

him to the grave within a 

very brief time, and shortly 

afterwards the Abbe de la 

Ville, Choiseul's old enemy, 

on coming to Versailles to 

thank King Louis for a 

political appointment which 

he had given him, was 

stricken with apoplexy and 

died under his very eyes. 

Lastly, his old friend and 

. Z amove. 

associate, the Marquis de 

Chouvlain, fell dead at his feet during a 

game of picquet. 

It was, therefore, with his always super- 
stitious mind filled with all manner of 
sinister forebodings that the king took his 
seat in the midst of a brilliant throng of 

courtiers to hear the last of the Lenten 

11 




162 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

sermons preached by the same young abbe 
whose warning voice had awakened in his 
heart the terrors of death and of the life to 
come scarcely a year before. From his 
place in the pulpit this brave young apostle 
of truth looked down into the royal pew, 
and, fixing his eyes upon his sovereign, 
addressed him directly, as was the custom 
at that time : " Yet forty days, sire, and 
Nineveh shall be overthrown." The king 
turned pale, and slowly and solemnly the 
preacher again enunciated the awful menace 
of the Prophet. Then, growing fervidly 
eloquent as he developed his subject, he 
compared Paris to Nineveh, denounced the 
infidelity of the age, the luxury and wan- 
tonness in high places, and urged on all the 
need of immediate repentance and purer, 
higher hving. Finally, speaking himself 
with the voice of the real Prophet, he 
solemnly warned the king and all his 
wanton court that without repentance on 
their part "the evil otherwise too surely 
coming on France could never be averted." 
And the king listened with increasing 
pallor, sick with a nameless terror, as one 



THE WAGES OF SIN 163 

who saw in a vision the reign of blood and 
terror and the gleam of the executioner's 
knife under which his successors were to 
pay the penalty for the sins of generations 
of Bourbons. 

It was, therefore, with minds full of dis- 
mal forebodings that the king and his mis- 
tress entered upon the month of April, 
1774, the month in which the Almanac de 
Liege for that year had already announced 
that " a great lady who played a role at a 
foreign court would cease to do so." 

The king was moody and melancholy in 
the extreme, and spoke frequently about 
his sickly state of health, the possibility of 
death, and — what seemed to disturb him 
more than all the rest — the frightful 
account he would have to render to the 
Supreme Being for the employment of the 
life which had been given him in this 
world. 

The Favorite, who, like all women of 
her class, was intensely superstitious, said 
again and again : " I shall be glad wlien 
this nasty month of April has passed," and 
the king declared that he should not know 



164 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

an easy moment until after the forty days 
predicted by the Abbe de Beauvais. 

As the days went on, the king's melan- 
choly increased, and his mistress, realizing 
that it behooved her to drag him from the 
depths of his despair, lest religious melan- 
cholia should take possession of his mind, 
organized a little pleasure trip to Trianon 
for the closing days of the month. They 
reached that charming retreat on the 2Gth, 
and on the following day His Majesty 
complained of headache and severe pains, 
and was unable to follow the chase on 
horseback. He returned from the hunt in 
a carriage, and at once sought repose in the 
Favorite's apartments, believing that he 
was suffering from an attack of acute 
indigestion. 

Historians differ as to the origin of the 
king's malady. The Abbe Badeau relates 
that on the day of his arrival at Trianon 
the king noticed a very pretty little girl 
who was gathering grass for her cow. 
Coming over to her he lifted up her head- 
dress and hair, and found that she had very 
fine eyes, and it occurred to him that she 



THE WAGES OF SIN 165 

would look very odd if dressed in the garb 
of a fine lady. The young girl was accord- 
ingly dressed like a lady in court apparel, 
and her face covered with rouge and 
patches. In this garb she supped and 
drank with the king, and the next day fell 
ill of smallpox and died. Other historians 
speak of the daughter of the gardener at 
Trianon and of a young girl who had been 
brought to the Pare aux Cerfs at the king's 
desire. The truth is that at that time 
there was an epidemic of smallpox in the 
neighborhood, and the king very naturally 
fell a victim to it. 

During the day the king's malady grew 
worse, and in the night he sent for his prin- 
cipal physician, Lemonier, who found him 
feverish, but showing no symptoms of a 
nature to cause uneasiness. The Favorite, 
dreading more than anything else the awful 
fear of death which came crowding into the 
heart of her lover with every attack of ill- 
ness, urged him to remain at Trianon and 
allow her to nurse him, without sending 
word to the royal family. The king con- 
sented to this, but, in the mean time, news 



166 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

of his indisposition reached Versailles, and 
the dauphin hastened to despatch to his 
grandfather's aid the surgeon La Martiniere, 
who he knew exercised a strong influence 
over the king and who was also an enemy 
of Du Barry's. 

La JNIartiniere reached Trianon on the 
28th of April, and, being a man of strong 
mind and imperative habits of speech, had 
no difficulty in prevailing upon the vacil- 
lating king to set out at once for Versailles. 
He himself supervised the preparations for 
the journey, and under his direction the 
king was lifted from his couch to a carriage 
and driven to Versailles, where he was 
immediately put to bed. The members of 
his family, including his daughters and the 
dauphin, came at once to see him ; but after 
a very brief conversation with each he sent 
them away for the night, and spent the rest 
of the evening with INIadame Du Barry. 
The next day the doctors, who were still 
ignorant of the nature of his malady, 
prescribed three bleedings, which left the 
patient in an enfeebled condition, and un- 
doubtedly did much to hasten his death. 



THE WAGES OF SIN 169 

The next day, the 30th, one of the doctors, 
drawing near to the king with a wax candle, 
discovered on his cheeks and forehead red 
spots in which pimples were already begin- 
ning to form, and knew at once that the 
disease with which he was afflicted was 
smallpox. Very much relieved at having 
actually learned the nature of his complaint, 
the physicians announced their discovery in 
tones that were so re-assuring that it was 
generally beheved at court that the king's 
illness meant only a ten days' confinement 
to his room. Bourdeau, however, Madame 
Du Barry's physician, shook his head doubt- 
ingly when the news was brought to him, 
and exclaimed : " Smallpox at sixty-four 
with a constitution like the king's is a 
terrible disease ! " 

And now outside the door of the sick 
room began a fierce struggle between the 
two rival parties of the court. The party 
that rallied about Madame Du Barry made 
every effort to push into the sick room the 
woman whom the king loved, in order that 
the impression might prevail that her influ- 
ence with him was still paramount. 



170 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

The anti-Barryites, on the contrary, cried 
out against the continuance of the scandal, 
demanded that the sacrament should be 
administered, and called upon the pious 
Monsieur de Beaumont to follow the ex- 
ample of the Bishop of Soisons who, thirty 
years before, when the king was thought to 
be mortally ill at Metz, drove from his 
side his then mistress, the Duchesse de 
Chateauroux. 

" Politics makes strange bedfellows," and 
so it happened that in " this jobbing and this 
trafficking in the conscience of the king," 
as the Cardinal de Luymes called it, we 
find the devotees and the Jesuits banding 
together to prevent the king from receiving 
communion, while the Choiseul party of 
philosophers and sceptics are in league to 
compel the Archbishop of Paris to admin- 
ister it. 

On the 2d of May, the archbishop 
arrived from Paris, bringing with him 
the sacrament, and hesitating between his 
conscience, which demanded of him the 
expulsion of the Favorite, and a sense of 
gratitude for the services which that Favor- 



THE WAGES OF SIN 171 

ite had rendered to his party by the over- 
throw of Choiseul and the elevation of 
D'Aiguillon. Before the arrival of the 
archbishop, RicheHeu, D'Aiguillon, and 
Madame Du Barry held a conference in 
which it was decided to do their best to 
prevent the administration of the sacra- 
ment. The king's daughter, Madame 
Adelaide, was easily won over to their side 
by the doctors of the Du Barry party who 
warned her that to even propose the sacra- 
ment might easily give the patient his 
death blow. Therefore the Due de Rich- 
elieu met the archbishop as he was about 
to enter the king's ante-chamber, and im- 
plored him not to cause the death of their 
sovereign by what he termed, with charac- 
teristic flippancy, a "theological proposi- 
tion." Then, with the graceful cynicism 
which so well became him, he ofFered to 
make his own confession to the prelate, 
promising to regale him with such a collec- 
tion of sins as he had not hstened to in 
many a year. Becoming serious again, 
he represented to the archbishop that to 
send away the Favorite was to insure the 



172 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

triumph of Choiseul, and that to injure 
the woman who was a friend was also to 
serve the faction that had always been out- 
spoken in its enmity to the ecclesiastics. 
As a final argument, he repeated to him 
what Madame Du Barry had said to him 
the night before : " I^et the archbishop 
leave us alone, and he shall have a cardi- 
nal's hat. I will take care of that, and will 
answer for it." 

The result of the Due de Richelieu's 
logical and convincing eloquence was that 
the archbishop entered the sick room, 
remained there for about a quarter of an 
hour, and then went away without speak- 
ing about the sacrament. The king was 
greatly reassured by his silence on the sub- 
ject of the Eucharist, and demanded that 
Madame Du Barry should be summoned 
at once to his presence. When she arrived, 
he kissed her beautiful arms and hands with 
a greater degree of pleasure than he had 
shown toward her since the beginning of 
his illness. 

Disappointed but still undaunted, the 
Choiseul faction turned to the Cardinal de 



THE WAGES OF SIN 173 

la Roche-Aymon, and urged him to pro- 
pose the sacrament. By this time they 
had ralhed to their support many of the 
more devout of the clergy, among them 
the Bishop of Car- 
cassonne, who 
appealed to 
the cardi- 
nal, in the 
name of the 
holy cross, 
not to allow 
King Louis to 
pass out of the 
world without 
being anointed, 
and called upon 
him to so deport 
himself in the sick chamber 
that the king should, before Lo^cisxvtaMe. 
he died, show an example of repentance to 
his country which he had scandalized. 

As a result of the great influence thus 
brought to bear on him, the Archbishop of 
Paris visited the king on the 3d of May, 
and there held a long conversation with 




174 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

him, the result of which was that in the 
evening when Jeanette Du Barry, whom he 
had sent for a few hours before, entered 
his chamber, radiant in the behef that 
her hold on him was as strong as ever, he 
beckoned her to his side and whispered : 
" Madame, I am very sick ; I know what 
I have to do ; I do not want to begin 
over again the scene at Metz, and there- 
fore we must part. Go to Ruel, to 
Monsieur D'Aiguillon's ; and be sure that 
I shall always feel for you the tenderest 
friendship." 

A moment after she had gone weeping 
from his presence, he called for her in a 
voice that showed he was beginning to 
become delirious. " Ah ! she is gone," he 
said sadly, when he realized that she was 
no longer in the room. " Then we must 
go, too — at least we must pray to Saint 
Genevieve." 

The reign of Jeanette Du Barry had 
ended. And with it had ended, too, the 
dynasty of left-handed queens of France, 
which began with Diane de Poictiers, and 
perished from off the face of the earth 




Alone with the King. 



THE WAGES OF SIN 177 

when the last of the Une was thrust from 
the royal bedchamber. 

But if the end of the Du Barry reign 
had been commonplace, in what terms shall 
we characterize the final passing of Louis 
XV, known to his subjects of half a century 
before as Louis the Well Beloved, and now 
stretched upon his gorgeous bed with the 
hand of death upon him and his mind a 
prey to the most awful terrors ? 

Just one week has passed since he turned 
his back upon his mistress and cried in his 
extremity for the consolations of the Church. 
In 1744, when he was ill at Metz, six thou- 
sand prayers for his recovery were ordered 
at Notre Dame by devout subjects. In 
1757, at the time of the assault upon his 
life by Damiens, only six hundred were 
called for, and now as he lies here at Ver- 
sailles, with the death agony upon him, only 
three pious souls have asked that the 
prayers of the Church be said for him in 
the great cathedral in Paris. 

Torn by the terrors of a reproaching 
conscience, he has summoned the priests to 
his bedside, and they have performed their 

12 



178 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

holy office. But even at the moment of 
receiving absolution at their hands, he clings 
to the idea of ruling by divine right, and 
though the cardinal announces that His 
IVIajesty repents of any scandals that his 
conduct may have occasioned in his king- 
dom, he qualifies it by adding that the 
king considers himself responsible for his 
conduct to God alone. 

By nature intensely superstitious, he de- 
mands that the clergy shall remain with 
him in the pestilential sick room from 
which all save his daughters and a few 
other devoted souls have long since fled in 
terror. Diu'ing the few hours of life that 
remain to him, he would rather listen to 
the prayers of the religious faith to which 
he has turned in his hour of anguish, than 
permit his mind to dwell on the ignoble 
life of vice and selfishness, of sins committed, 
and good undone, that is fast drawing to its 
pitiful close. 

Little as we may envy this Bourbon king 
the physical sufferings which mark his end, 
we cannot help feeling that they must be 
light indeed compared with the agony of 



THE WAGES OF SIN 179 

remorse bred by the thoughts that come 
crowding upon him, despite his efforts to 
fix his mind on the consolations that reh- 
gion extends to him. He must remember 
that " the well-beloved " of fifty years ago 
has not of late dared to show his face in 
his own capital for fear of mockery and 
insult. He must remember what France 
was in the days of his predecessor, and what 
she is now, with her peasantry ground down 
under the heel of the most atrocious politi- 
cal system ever known, her soldiers sent to 
far-off climes to be butchered in useless 
warfare, her colonies gone, her prestige van- 
ished, and want, shame, and rebellion stalk- 
ing her streets. He has often wondered 
cynically how his uncouth, stupid grandson 
will contrive to bear up under the kingly 
crown for which he is predestined. Can 
he think of him now without a prophetic 
glimpse of the axe flashing across his 
troubled vision ? Above all else that is pass- 
ing through his mind, sharper than the stings 
of conscience, more solemn than the pray- 
ers of the Church, ring the awful words of 
the Prophet as they fell from the lips of the 



180 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

Abbe Beauvais in the court chapel : " Forty 
days yet, su-e, and Nineveh shall be over- 
thrown." The fortieth day has come and 
is drawing to a close. Already the shad- 
ows are deepening in the chamber whose 
splendors are a mockery to the foul disease 
that has laid this mighty sovereign low. A 
candle has been lighted and placed in the 
embrasure of one of the tall, sumptuously 
curtained windows that looks out upon a 
marble courtyard. Hundreds of eyes are 
watching that candle from without, for it is 
known throughout the palace that so long 
as the king lives it will burn. 

It is late in the afternoon, and the fortieth 
day is almost passed, when of a sudden the 
light in the window of the death chamber 
is extinguished, and the courtiers come 
pouring out of the rooms where they have 
been waiting, and, with a noise that is abso- 
lutely like thunder, rush through the corri- 
dors and down the great staircases to the 
chamber in which the new king, Louis 
XVI, and Marie Antoinette stand waiting 
for their reign to begin. At the feet of the 
new sovereign the courtiers make their first 



THE WAGES OF SIN 181 

obeisance, then rise and hurry away from 
the house of death in which the loathsome 
body of him who was once the hope of 
France, Louis the Well Beloved, lies unat- 
tended, save by a few of the minor clergy 
and some menial attendants who must pay 
with their lives for their fidelity. 

Late at night the body, attended by a 
scanty escort, is borne at a quick trot 
through crowds of contemptuous Parisians 
who line both sides of the road all the way 
to the Abbey of St. Denis, where it is 
hastily thrown into a vault. 

It is a dark and a\\'ful picture, this final 
passing of the French king. There is one 
gleam of tenderness, however, bright with 
the reflection of past glory, that falls across 
his bier as it is carried with irreverent haste 
through the gates of Versailles. A grizzled 
veteran of the old wars shoulders his mus- 
ket and brings his hand to salute, as the last 
honor that he can pay to his dead king. 
" After all," murmurs the vieux moustache, 
sympathetically, " he was at Fontenoy." 




CHAPTER IX 



MARIE ANTOINETTE'S REIGN 




|HE king is dead ! Long 
live the king ! " 

" God help and pro- 
tect us ! We are too 
young to reign ! " 

Such, we are told, was 
the beginning of the 
reign of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. 
That the young queen lost no time in 
carrying out her oft-repeated threat to dis- 
miss the Favorite from court the very 
moment it should be in her power to do 
so, is evidenced from the following letter, 
placed in Madame Du Barry's hands by a 
messenger the day after the body of Louis 
XV had been borne at a rapid pace from 
Versailles to St. Denis, and there thrust, 
with scant ceremony, into the tomb. 



MARIE ANTOINETTE'S REIGN 185 

Versailles, May 12th, 1774. 

I hope, madame, that you will not have any 
doubts as to all the pain I feel at being obliged to 
announce to you that you are forbidden to appear 
at court ; but I am obliged to carry out the orders 
of the king, who wishes me to impress on you that 
his intention is, not to allow you to come there till 
there is a fresh order made by him. His Majesty, 
at the same time, is kind enough to permit you to 
go and see your aunt in the Abbey of Pont-aux- 
Dames, and I am going, for that reason, to write 
to the abbess in order that you may not experience 
any difficulty in the matter. You will be good 
enough to acknowledge the receipt of this letter 
through the person who brings it to you, so that I 
may be able to assure His Majesty of the fact that 
I have carried out his orders. 

I have the honor to be, with respect, madame. 
Your very humble and very obedient servant, 

De la Vrilliere. 

Marie Antoinette's defenders claim that 
she had nothing to do with the expulsion 
of Du Barry, and lay great stress on the 
fact that within comparatively recent years 
there has been found, in the archives of the 
Prefecture of Police, an entry which shows 
that this order was entered there on the 



186 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

9th of May, 1774, the day before the king's 
death, and the inference is, supported by 
certain corroborative testimony, that the 
king desired to have her put away for a 
time, because she knew too many state 
secrets. This is not unhkely, when we 
consider the absolute indifference of Louis 
XV to the feeHngs of every one about him, 
even of those whom he beheved that he 
loved. His grandson, on the other hand, 
was of an easy-going disposition, and it 
is scarcely probably that he would have 
adopted such harsh ineasures in regard to 
a woman who had enjoyed the love and 
confidence of his grandfather and prede- 
cessor. The matter is touched upon, how- 
ever, in a manner that should dispose of all 
doubt, in a letter sent by the young queen 
to her empress mother to announce the 
death of Louis XV, and in which she says : 
" The public expected great changes in a 
moment ! The king has limited himself to 
sending the creature away to a convent, 
and to driving from the court everything 
which is connected with that scandal." 
There is something almost like a note of 



MARIE ANTOINETTE'S REIGN 187 



warning in the words uttered by Du Barry 
herself on receipt of the message which 
sent her into exile : 

" A nice reign indeed, that starts with a 
lettre de cachet ! " she exclaimed, with a few 
choice blasphemies, to the messenger who 
has brought her the duke's 
letter. She herself, to do her 
justice, had never, so 
far as authentic his- 
tory asserts, asked 
for a single lettre de 
cachet during the 
whole five years 
of her reign, and this 
in itself is a circumstance 
that redounds to the credit 
of this " vuimalignant, not wholly unpitiable 
thing," as Carlisle has called her, especially 
wiien we consider the fact that during the 
whole period of her reign she was the tar- 
get for every sort of attack that feminine 
jealousy, court intrigue, or the political am- 
bition of her enemies could devise. Her 
predecessor, the Marquise de Pompadour, 
left a very different record behind her. 




The Lie Larry coffee cup. 



188 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

Jean Du Barry, although included in 
the same order, was too smart to be caught. 
The instant that he learned of the king's 
death, he consulted a friend, named Goy, 
as to what he should do, and this gentle- 
man, who appears to have possessed a high 
degree of common sense, replied that there 
was nothing left for him but the jewel case 
and the post-horses. 

" What ! " demanded the Roue, with an 
assumption of dignity, " do you advise 
me to fly ? " 

" Well," replied his friend, " you can 
alter it to the post-horses and the jewel 
case, if it sounds better." 

The Roue took this advice, and in a few 
hours was well on his way to Germany, 
which country he reached in safety, thanks 
to the fact that the period ante-dated that of 
the telegraph and telephone. Two years 
later, he returned to Toulouse, married 
again, and for some time led what must 
have seemed a very monotonous life to one 
accustomed to such high intrigues as those 
that had previously engrossed his attention. 
It was his boast that, during his sister-in- 



MARIE AxNTOINETTE^S REIGN 189 

law's reign, he had " flung into the pave- 
ments of Paris " eighteen million of francs ; 
but that did not prevent him from harass- 
ing her constantly for money until the 
last days of her life. 

When Louis XV died, one of the cords 
— and there were not many of them left, — 
that had bound the French people to the 
monarchy snapped in twain. By a curious 
coincidence, on the same day, and almost at 
the very moment of his death, news of 
the passage of the Boston Port Act in the 
English Parliament was first received in 
this country. This bill was a measure of 
retaliation for the Boston Tea Party of the 
previous December 16th, and by its provi- 
sions the port of Boston was to remain 
closed to ships of all kinds until its inhabi- 
tants should reimburse the East Indian 
Company for the loss of the tea which had 
gone to flavor the waters of the harbor. 

The receipt of the news that the obsti- 
nate old English king was still determined 
to discipline the great lusty colony like a 
refractory child, was marked by an exhibi- 
tion of feeling that convinced statesmen 



190 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

like Adams, Hancock and their peers that 
a revokition of the thirteen colonies was 
one of the absolute certainties of the near 
future. 

So it happened that while Louis XVI, 
with his queen at his elbow, was beginning, 
with a spiteful lettre de cachet, a reign that 
was destined to end in blood and ignominy, 
the men who were dominant in the Ameri- 
can colonies were beginning to prepare for 
the great seven years struggle that destiny 
had marked out for them. 

As for Madame Du Barry, her reign hav- 
ing ended with that of the king, she pro- 
ceeded to the abbey designated in her lettre 
de cachet, and IMarie Antoinette began her 
reign as the lawful queen of France. 

If we marvel at the way in which Louis 
XV and his court went dancing, drinking 
on toward the deluge that the Pompadour 
had predicted, we marvel all the more at 
the way in which his grandson and his light- 
headed young queen bore the sceptre of 
government. 

Neither one of them seems to have had 
any sense whatever of impending disaster. 



MARIE ANTOINETTE'S REIGN 193 

though even the old King Louis had often 
remarked, " When I am gone, I should like 
very much to know how Berry [the family 
name for the dauphin, whom he thoroughly 
despised] will contrive to stand up under 
it all," meaning the republican element 
which he himself had found it so difficult 
to cope with. 

It was not merely that they were " too 
young to reign," they were too ignorant to 
be intrusted with such an aM^ful responsi- 
bility as that of the government of the 
kingdom of France. 

Louis XVI was as much unlike his noble- 
looking, aristocratic grandfather as it was 
possible for a man to be. His manners 
were awkward, his voice harsh and uncul- 
tured, his clothing soiled and untidy, and 
his mind dull, and his will weak and vacil- 
lating. His appearance betrayed his habits 
of gluttony, for he was obese of figure and 
heavy of feature. When he dined in pub- 
he, in deference to the ancient French cus- 
tom which decreed that the inviolable right 
of the people of France was to see their sov- 
ereign eat, he gorged himself to an extent 

13 



194 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

that proved disgusting to those who had 
been used to the elegancies of Louis XV 
and his associates. He devoted himself 
chiefly to the chase, and to amateur lock- 
making and map-drawing, and kept a diary 
which is very interesting reading. The 
day in which he killed nothing was deemed 
worse than wasted, and left no record be- 
hind it save the single word " Nothing " 
scrawled in the diary. 

So unfavorable was the impression that 
he created in the minds of his subjects that 
his advisers deemed it prudent to counter- 
act it by means of the suggestion, artfully 
circulated, that after all such a simple and 
frugal king was formed for his whole peo- 
ple rather than for his court alone. 

And yet some gleam of the impending 
axe may have crossed even his dull, uncom- 
prehending brain, for we are told that at his 
coronation, at the very moment when the 
crown was placed upon his brow, he raised 
his hand suddenly to relieve his head for 
the moment of the w^eight, and exclaimed 
petulantly : " It hurts me ! " 

As to the real character of the young 



MARIE ANTOINETTE'S REIGN 195 

queen, it is not an easy matter to get at 
the truth, so fierce has been the abuse of 
her detractors, so fulsome the panegyrics 
of her supporters. With the question of 
her morals, we need not meddle, nor should 
we lend a too ready ear to the stories that 
were circulated in regard to her — stories 
of the kind that always will be circulated 
so long as women of youth, beauty, and 
high spirits shall be exposed to the fierce 
white light of public fame. 

That Marie Antoinette proved a far 
greater calamity to the French people than 
had Madame Du Barry, is a fact that it 
would be difficult to gainsay, nor should 
the circumstance that she was the legiti- 
mate queen of France, and not the mere 
mistress of a dotard king, serve as an ex- 
cuse for her follies. Born in the purple, 
and having as a mother the wisest of sov- 
ereigns and the most prudent of counsel- 
lors, a great deal more might have been 
expected of her than of a young woman 
with no inheritance but beauty, a sort 
of bright native wit, and unfailing good 
temper, who, transplanted from the shop 



196 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

counter to a seat which, though unlawful, 
was none the less secure, on the steps of 
the throne of France, had plunged into 
luxuries and extravagances of the sort that 
have a stronger fascination than anything 
else in the world for women of her class. 
She spent millions of the public money, 
because it was given to her to spend, and 
she spent it, too, without asking herself 
whence it came. It was enough for her 
that she held the envied place of Favorite, 
and as she was not a lawful queen she 
could not take upon her own shoulders the 
responsibilities of the kingdom. 

Marie Antoinette, however, came of a 
class in which governing is as much of a 
trade as is the profession of cooking in the 
province of Ticino in Italian Switzerland, 
from which have come the greatest cooks 
and restaurateurs in the world. 

The French people had the same right 
to the services of their extravagantly paid 
queen that the hotel-keeper has to those of 
the high salaried chef, nurtured in an at- 
mosphere of sauces, as she had been in that 
of the Austrian court. 



MARIE ANTOINETTE'S REIGN 197 

But although a brilHant and beautiful 
figure in her husband's court, carrying her- 
self with queenly dignity when occasion 
demanded, and encouraging, by her patron- 
age, the arts of music, painting, and statu- 
ary, she was absolutely selfish in her pursuit 
of her own enjoyment, reckless of the 
results of her folly, and cruelly vindictive 
in her treatment of those who, like Du 
Barry, had incurred her dislike. 

History has laid many evil things at the 
door of the fallen Favorite, and one story, 
which her enemies never tire of repeat- 
ing, is to the effect that on one occasion, 
when her royal lover was greatly exercised 
over the partition of Poland, she inquired 
innocently : " Where is Poland ? " This 
anecdote does not do much credit to her 
education, but after all it was not her 
business, as the kings mistress, to know 
anything about Poland. There is some- 
thing far worse than mere ignorance on 
the part of one who should have been well 
informed, in the query of Marie Antoinette, 
" Why do the people cry for bread, when 
they can get such nice cakes for a penny ? " 



198 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

Many and interesting are the stories 
related of the young queen during the 
early years of her reign, and with many of 
them we can sympathize ; while her impa- 
tience of the elaborate ceremonial of court- 
life, with its ponderous rules and etiquette, 
as burdensome to her as the enormous 
coiffure which she was compelled to wear 
on her head, cannot fail to commend her 
to us of a simpler, and, we hope, a more 
sensible age. It is pleasant to read of her 
mockery of JNIadame de Noailles, whose duty 
it was to follow her about and remind her, 
in low, respectful whispers, of neglected 
points of etiquette. What more entranc- 
ing picture is there than that of this beau- 
tiful young queen lying prone on a bed of 
forest leaves, and laughingly refusing to 
rise until Madame de Noailles should be 
summoned to tell her what particular form 
of etiquette the rules of the French court 
prescribed for a dauphiness who had been 
thx'own from her donkey. 

Moreover Marie Antoinette will be en- 
deared to Americans for all time because 
of the influence which she used in our 



MARIE ANTOINETTE'S REIGN 201 

behalf during our struggle with the mother 
country. She helped to make Benjamin 
Franklin, then accredited to her husband's 
court, the rage of Paris, and under the 
spell of his wit and diplomacy espoused the 
cause of the colonies with all her heart. 
This beautiful queen, the chivalrous Mar- 
quis de Lafayette, and the American com- 
missioner, who was none the less crafty 
and adroit because of his Quaker garb and 
unpowdered locks, did a vast deal to influ- 
ence public opinion in France, and that, in 
its turn, brought over the ministry to the 
American side. The king, however, was 
very averse to having anything to do with 
the American disturbance, and even at the 
moment of signing the treaty with the 
United States of America, in 1778, said: 
"You will remember that this is against 
my better judgment." 

That the king viewed the matter rightly 
from his own point of view was amply 
proved by subsequent events. For not 
only did his contributions of men and 
treasure to the American cause add enor- 
mously to the great public debt under 



202 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

which France was then groaning, but the 
success of our arms — aided as we were at 
a most critical moment by the French — 
served to spread abroad through the king- 
dom the seeds of democracy. Soldiers re- 
turning from America told stories of the 
new land of liberty which served only to 
fan the flames of discontent, and it is not 
too much to say that one of the greatest 
mistakes of the reign of I^ouis XVI, so far 
as the stability of the monarchy was con- 
cerned, was his taking part in a costly war 
which gained for him the undying hatred 
of England and failed to secure for him 
the friendship of the new republic. 

During the first years of her reign, the 
young queen remained childless, and de- 
voted herself exclusively to the pursuit of 
pleasure. In the mornings she received 
visitors in her bedchamber, as Du Barry 
had done, and was scarcely less particular 
than the former Favorite in her manner of 
exposing her charms to the gaze of her 
admirers. In the afternoons she amused 
herself with high play at the card-tables or 
in the gardens of Little Trianon, and in 



MARIE ANTOINETTE'S REIGN 203 



court, took 
atricals in 
was of the 



the evenings she went to masked balls and 
late suppers in company with the worst 
libertines of the 
part in private the- 
which the language 
loosest sort, lost great 
sums of money 
at the gaming 
table, and, in 
short, lived in 
such a man- 
ner as seriously to 
weaken her popular- 
ity with the French 
people and to alarm 
her prudent mother 
Vienna. So long as 
Empress Maria \ 
lived and Mercy 
Argenteau re- 
tained the post 
of Austrian 
ambassador at 
the French 
court, Marie 
Antoinette re- 




Veritahh night table actually used by 
Du Barry at Versailles. 



204 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

mained to a certain extent under the 
maternal control, and the correspondence 
between the sovereign and the diplomat, as 
well as that of the mother and daughter, 
afford a marvellously interesting insight into 
the history of that period. 

No less interesting is the picture of court 
life drawn by Mr. Thomas E. Watson in 
" The Story of France " : 

" As Frederick the Great loved Sans 
Souci, and Washington Mt. Vernon, as 
Mirabeau would slip away on Sunday to 
lounge in the rose gardens at Argenteuil, 
and Napoleon loved to saunter, hands 
crossed behind him, along the quietudes of 
Malmaison, — Marie Antoinette sought to 
create for herself an ideal retreat, an Eden 
of the fancy, where she was to find true 
friendship, true happiness, blissful repose. 
The Little Trianon was a delicious bit of 
marble architecture built by Louis XV in 
a retired portion of the park of \^ersailles. 
It was here that he had loved to lay aside 
the trappings and formalities of royalty and 
play the private gentleman, entertaining a 
few choice spirits in the little palace, and 



MARIE ANTOINETTES REIGN 205 

amusing himself with amateur farming and 
flower culture in the lovely grounds. 

" Louis XVI gave Little Trianon to his 
wife, and with the eager delight of a child 
she set about making it a paradise. The 
world was ransacked for the finest trees, 
the choicest shrubs, the loveliest flowers. 
The rarest skill was employed in laying 
out gardens, lawns, shrubberies, walks, 
creating grottoes, hills, lakes and winding 
rivers. No expense was spared ; the queen 
demanded a fairy-land, and the gardener 
gave it ; the taxpayers footed the bills, and 
the queen was in ecstasies. The Little 
Trianon became a gem, a marvel of beauty, 
w^hich all travellers went to see. 

" Brilliant parterres, emerald stretches of 
velvet lawn, waving masses of luxuriant 
foliage, glimpses of marble statuary and 
silvery waters, — all were there to fascinate 
the eye and kindle enthusiasm. Fountains 
sprang up in the sun, sparkling and dancing 
and splashing ; the rivulet wound in and 
out, round and round, through the garden, 
the lawn, the meadow ; the nightingales 
sang in the shadow of the groves ; the 



206 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

marble Belvidere crowned the steep ; and 
upon the enchanted island which rose from 
the bosom of the lake rested the Temple 
of Love. A model rustic village lined the 
borders of the lake, and there was the mill, 
the grange, and the manor-house for the 
master, all complete. The dairy must not 
be overlooked, that El Dorado dairy where 
Blanchette, the cow, was milked by the 
' daughter of the Caesars.' The milk ves- 
sels were of porcelain, rested upon marble 
slabs, and conveyed Blanchette's milk to a 
churn of silver. 

"In this Eden the queen lived with a 
select few of the younger members of the 
nobility. The king himself was not to 
coine unless invited. Only the few were 
welcome, — only the congenial, the young, 
the gallant, the gay. Dull care must not 
enter here, nor gloom, nor weariness, nor 
pain. 

" In the lexicon of the queen's youth, 
there was no such word as duty. To 
frolic, to feast, to dress, to outshine the 
brightest, to dazzle the eye of the be- 




I 



MARIE ANTOINETTE'S REIGN 209 

holder, to create a radiance in her own 
immediate circle, to laugh, jest, play and 
enjoy, — was the whole of her gospel. 
Such was high life all around her. Why 
should n't she be gay ? Let others talk 
of public distress, prate of economy and 
preach of woes to come. It was an old 
song that had been heard now since the 
good year 1700: 'We must amuse our- 
selves.' On with the dance ; on with festi- 
vals and theatricals ; on with the horse- 
races, sleigh-rides, and lawn-parties ; on to 
the opera, the opera-ball and the opera- 
supper. Let us lose royally at faro, the 
State pays ; let us enrich our pets, the 
State pays ; let us lavish millions upon 
Little Trianon, the State pays. Let us 
whisper over the latest scandal, and titter 
as we do so. Let us skate along the con- 
versational surface as close as we can go 
to the forbidden ground of the utterly 
obscene. Let us mock at all things seri- 
ous, decorous, and coldly prudent ! Such 
was Marie Antoinette before trouble sobered 
her thoughts, silvered her tresses and struck 
the light out of her life. 

14 



210 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

" At Paris, in the Bibliotheque Nationale, 
you may see a book which speaks but too 
convincingly of the true character of the 
unfortunate queen. The cover is that of 
the Cathohc missal, for Marie Antoinette 
was a devoted Cathohc, and she was faith- 
ful in her attendance at chapel ; but within 
the sacred cover of this book of worship is 
enclosed the contents of an obscene novel. 
The priest could only see the cover, and he 
would glorify God for so devout a worship- 
per ; but the bowed head of the queen was 
bent over a filthy love-story, and while the 
priest talked of God, the queen was reading 
the history of polite adultery. 

" Marie Antoinette should be judged by 
the standard of her own times, not by that 
of ours. She should be compared to those 
around her, not to those around us. En- 
vironment is the father of us all — environ- 
ment and heredity." 

In due course of time a daughter was 
born to the queen, and afterwards, in 
October, 1781, a son, and the whole nation 
went wild with delight because their king- 
had an heir. Sir Samuel Romilly, who 



MARIE ANTOINETTE'S REIGN 211 

happened to be in Paris at this time, was 
saddened by the sight of the swarms of 
hungry, ragged, dirty people who danced 
in the pubhc parks to the music of the 
royal band to show their delight at the 
advent of a child who was to be brought 
up as a common oppressor. 

The birth of this child served to restore 
for the moment the popularity of the 
young queen, which had waned materially 
during the half dozen years of her reign, 
because of her own conduct. JNIr. Watson 
has given us the picture of the rejoicings 
with which the birth of the little dauphin 
was celebrated, which is well worth quot- 
ing as it shows us Louis XVI and his 
Austrian queen at the one moment during 
their reign when they really seemed to be 
beloved by their subjects. 

" People embraced each other in the 
street, as though the happiness of the event 
was personal to every citizen of France. 
Addresses of congratulation poured in from 
all the departments and public bodies. 
Illuminations lit up the towns and cities, 
processions thronged the streets, loyal songs 



212 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

were sung at the theatres amid deafening 
applause, Te Deums were chanted in cathe- 
drals, and melodious organs pealed forth 
their richest notes. All France was glad, 
deliriously glad. God had given the king 
a son, and the people would not be left 
without a royal staff to lean upon. The 
guilds and trades-unions of Paris were as 
exuberant in their manifestations of joy as 
any place-hunter of the court. They spent 
money freely to make a fitting display at 
Versailles. Arrayed in the new uniforms 
of their various organizations and accom- 
panied by bands of music, the mechanics, 
artificers, and tradesmen of Paris marched 
out to Versailles and paraded in the court 
of the palace. Chimney-sweepers, ele- 
gantly dressed, carried an ornamented 
chimney upon the top of which was 
perched a chimney-sweep of the smallest 
size. The butchers passed in review bear- 
ing a colossal beef. Smiths hammered 
away upon an anvil ; shoemakers made a 
pretty pair of shoes for the son of the king, 
and the tailors presented a tiny uniform of 
the dauphin's regiment. For a long time 



MARIE ANTOINETTE'S REIGN 215 

Louis XVI, the happy father, who could 
not say ' my son ' too often that blessed 
day, stood on the balcony viewing the 
parade, intoxicated by the enthusiasm which 
prevailed. No happier day was his. King, 
queen and people were united then, drawn 
together by the dimpled hand of a child. 

" Amid all these rejoicings what spectre 
pushes its way to the front, marring the 
universal pleasure ? It is the procession of 
the worshipful coffin-makers, to whom it 
had not occurred that a hearse or a casket, 
borne in procession, would not add to the 
exhilaration of the hour. Old Princess 
Sophie, the king's aunt, weak of nerves 
and querulous, thrilled with horror at the 
sight, and had the worshipful coffin-makers 
put out of the procession. 

" The market-women of Paris came in a 
body to see the queen, to congratulate her. 
These women were dressed in black silk 
gowns, wore diamonds, and had their ad- 
dress inscribed upon the leaves of a fan. 
The queen received these Dames of the 
Hall most affably, and the king dined them 
in the palace. The fish- women also came, 



216 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

also gained access to the queen, and made 
three speeches of congratulation, — one to 
the king, one to the queen, and one to the 
child. A more fervent spirit of attachment 
than that which inspired these addresses of 
the working people of Paris never found 
expression. Gaze once more upon this 
scene — the king on the balcony at Ver- 
sailles, tears of joy in his eyes, his heart 
overflowing with happiness, and around 
him the splendid and spontaneous tribute 
of boundless affection laid at his feet by 
the laboring classes of Paris. This was 
October, 1781. 

" The outburst of loyalty and affection 
was not confined to Paris and Versailles. 
It prevailed throughout the provinces. It 
was universal and genuine. Songs, danc- 
ings, music, festivals, celebrations, did not 
cease till way into January, 1782." 





CHAPTER X 

IN RETIREMENT 

ISTORY, that is to 
say authentic history, 
has very httle to say 
of the fallen Favorite 
during the years that 
passed from the mo- 
ment when Louis XVI 
began his ill-fated reign with a lettre de 
cachet until that in which she fell a victim 
to the Reign of Terror. 

She remained in the abbey until early 
in 1775, when she was permitted to regain 
her liberty. Forbidden to live within ten 
leagues of Paris, or the court, she purchased 
the Chateau of Saint Vrain, situated a few 
miles from Artajon and consisting of a 
handsome house, provided with chapel, 
stables, forecourt, etc., and a domain of 



118 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 



about one hundred and forty acres. This 
property, which still exists, had belonged 
to the second son of Madame La Garde, 
with whom, early in her career, when she 
was simply little Jeanette *Becu, she had 
found employment as lady's companion. 

Here she remained for 
two years, giving balls and 
other entertainments, re- 
lieving the necessities of the 
poor, and enjoying as best 
she could the pleasures of 
French country life. She 
also founded two scholar- 
ships in a school of art for 
workmen, which her old 
friend, M. de Sartines, the 
ex-chief of Police, had estab- 
lished in Paris. The deed 
for these scholarships bears 
the date of September 21, 
1775, and on the same day 
she purchased, for fifty-three 
thousand francs, a house and 
thirty acres of land, which she presented 
to her mother and stepfather, thus enabling 




Bodyguard of 
Louis X V. 




5 

Oh 



'^ 



IN RETIREMENT 221 

them to live in comfort for the rest of their 
days. 

Having obtained permission to return to 
Louveciennes, Madame Du Barry repaired 
to that house with her great retinue of ser- 
vants, and there lived for years a life that 
was almost wlioUy devoid of exciting inci- 
dent and was devoted largely to charitable 
work among her poorer neighbors. 

One of her last appearances in the great 
world in which she had once played her part 
was on the occasion of the debut of the 
beautiful Mademoiselle Contat, afterwards 
the Countess de Parny, at the Theatre 
Fran^ais. It was a brilliant audience that 
gathered in honor of this lovely young de- 
butante. Marie Antionette was there in the 
royal box in company with her brother, the 
Emperor of Austria, then journeying under 
the incognito of Count von Falkenstein. 
With them, were the Princesse de Lamballe, 
the Countess de Polignac, the courtly and 
elegant Baron de Besenval and the Count 
de A^audreuil, who shared with the tragedian 
Le Kain the distinction of possessing the 
most courtly and gracious manners toward 



THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

the fair sex in all France. In boxes adjoin- 
ing that of the queen, were the Due and 
Duchesse de Chartres, in company with the 
fascinating Mademoiselle de Genlis, whose 
name the gossips associated with that of the 
duke, Madame and Mademoiselle de Pro- 
vence and the Countess d'Artois — and a 
host of other Parisian exquisites, while the 
rest of the audience was made up of the 
leading critics, poets, dramatists and artists 
of Paris. 

By many in the throng that clustered 
about the royal box the Countess Du Barry 
was recognized, simply dressed and closely 
veiled, as she passed along the corridor on 
the arm of the Due de Cosse-Brissac. 
Watchful eyes saw her afterwards, still 
veiled and hiding behind the thick silk cur- 
tains of her box, for she had come from her 
lovely chateau, not because she desired to 
be seen in the gay world, but because of her 
deep interest in the event of the evening. 

Escorted by the duke, JNIadame Du Barry 
left the theatre before the conclusion of the 
play, noticing, perhaps, that she had been 
recognized by the royal party, and being 



IN RETIREMENT 

fully aware of the queen's antipathy to her. 
Indeed Marie Antoinette that very evening 
rephed to her brother's question as to the 
identity of the veiled beauty that she was 
" that creature," a term which had pre- 
viously shocked the good sense and taste of 
Maria Theresa, when she encountered it, as 
she frequently had, in her daughter's letters. 

Concerning this incident, Lady Jackson 
speaks her mind with her accustomed free- 
dom, and at the same time relates how the 
Austrian Emperor proceeded to gratify the 
curiosity which had been awakened in him 
at the sight of the famous Madame Du 
Barry, and the buzz of interest and conjec- 
ture that had gone round the theatre the 
moment she was recognized. 

" The retired life of ' the creature ' at 
Louveciennes," says Lady Jackson, " natu- 
rally provoked comparison with that of ' the 
creatures ' of Versailles, and was not always 
in favor of the latter. With the Parisian 
public, the Favorite of the late king was far 
less unpopular than the new favorites of the 
queen, while at and around Louveciennes, 
she was greatly revered and beloved for her 



224 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

kindness of heart, the interest she took in 
the poor and her extreme benevolence. She 
could not, on this occasion, have heard the 
queen's petulant exclamation or the whis- 
pered rebuke of the incognito Emperor. 

" On the morrow, however, she was in- 
formed that the Counts von Falkenstein 
and Cobenzel begged permission to pay 
their respects to the lady of Louveciennes, 
and to be allowed to walk through the pic- 
turesque grounds surrounding the chateau. 
JNIadame Du Barry took much pride in her 
park and grounds. She was accustomed to 
walk in them daily — often for hours to- 
gether. They were charmingly laid out in 
the English style, and the fine range of green- 
houses was filled with the choicest and most 
beautiful flowers — a luxury then only at- 
tainable by the wealthy and great. The 
pavilion was a perfect museum of objects 
of art. Joseph and his friend seem to have 
been greatly interested in them, and gener- 
ally well pleased with all they saw — not 
omitting the fair chatelaine herself. 

" She was then in her thirty-second year, 
and still retained, without any tendency to 



IN RETIREMENT 225 

embonpoint, the youthful grace of her tall, 
slight, elegant figure. Powder dimmed 
not the golden tinge of her wavy light 
brown hair, and no rouge disfigured her 
face. A strange contrast this must have 
presented to eyes accustomed to the 
painted faces of Versailles, She now 
dressed with great simplicity, but always 
in excellent taste. Leaning on the arm 
of her Imperial guest, she conducted him 
through those fine avenues of lofty forest 
trees for which her domain was famous, 
and to those sites whence the finest pros- 
pects were obtained. And when, after 
spending with her the greater part of the 
day in admiring the beauties of nature and 
art, in both of which Louveciennes was so 
rich, Joseph took his leave, he replied to 
her thanks for the honor of his visit to a 
poor recluse : ' Madame, beauty is every- 
where a queen ; and it is I who am honored 
by your receiving my visit.' 

" Cynical as he was, and sometimes very 
offensive, yet the Emperor Joseph, when 
he pleased, could make very gallant 
speeches and pay very flattering com- 

15 



THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

pliments. Nowhere does he seem to have 
shown to so much disadvantage as at Ver- 
sailles, for all he beheld there was out of 
harmony with his ideas of what ought to 
have been. He had a strong presentiment 
of evil looming in the future for France, 
and that the gloomy horizon was fraught 
with danger both to her inert sovereign 
and his thoughtless queen." 

Another event which drew Madame Du 
Barry from her retirement was the return 
of Voltaire to France, and his apotheosis at 
the Theatre Fran^ais. The ostensible ob- 
ject of the philosopher's visit to Paris was 
to rehearse the actors who were to play his 
new tragedy, " Irene," and for a time it 
seemed doubtful whether this great French- 
man would be allowed to return to Paris 
after his years of exile. The clergy were 
almost unanimous in urging the king to 
forbid his return. But on the other hand 
all Paris was aroused at the thought of 
welcoming once more the great dramatic 
poet, philosopher and enemy of shams, who 
was anxious to undertake this long and 
arduous winter journey in order that he 



IN RETIREMENT 229 

might see once more the city that he loved 
so well. 

Worn out by the fatigue of his long 
journey and the excitement and annoyance 
of constant rehearsals, the venerable dram- 
atist was unable to take part in the glories 
of the first representation, accounts of the 
progress of which were carried to his bed- 
side, from time to time, during the even- 
ing. It was for this performance, and 
with a view of meeting Voltaire once 
more, that INIadame Du Barry came up to 
Paris from Louveciennes, and it was at this 
time that she met again, and for the last 
time, the Due de Richeheu, and for the 
first time Benjamin Franklin, who had 
brought his grandson with him to obtain 
the philosopher's benediction. 

" Kneel, my son," said the famous 
American, " kneel before the great man ! " 

The youth obeyed, and Voltaire, laying 
his hand on his head, said in EngHsh, 
"God and Liberty!" 

Voltaire was able to attend the sixth 
representation of his play, but only after 
having been nerved for the occasion by 



230 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

strong stimulants. He was carried from 
the theatre to his home in an ahnost sense- 
less condition, and a few days later was 
dead. 

The winter of 1783 did much to hasten 
the downfall of the monarchy. It was a 
period of unheard-of severity, memorable 
above all preceding winters for its seventy- 
six days of intense cold. In the splendid 
abodes of the rich, where there was but 
little provision for warmth, it was found 
necessary to hang carpets and tapestries 
over the huge doors and windows, and to 
keep the chimney-places filled, night and 
day, with blazing logs, whose heat, how- 
ever, was more seen than felt, as it disap- 
peared up the enormous chimneys. But in 
the squalid streets of old Paris, where the 
poor dwelt, the poverty was more bitter 
and the spirit of discontent fiercer than 
ever before. It was a difficult matter for 
the police to keep the people in check and 
prevent them from satisfying their own 
hunger from the abundance so freely dis- 
played by the wasteful and selfish nobility. 
In the public squares, small doles of black 



IN RETIREMENT 231 

bread were distributed to the hungry, many 
of whom were also employed for a few sous 
a day in the work of removing the snow 
from the entrances to the great palaces and 
hotels of the nobility and modelling it into 
huge, uncouth statues, presumably of the 
king and queen. The object of this was 
to raise the cry of " Vive le Roi ! " and with 
it " Vive la Reine ! " But as a general 
thing, the cry of "A bas I'Autrichienne " 
made itself heard high above the perfunc- 
tory clamor of the poor wretches who were 
trying to hold their jobs by a display of 
patriotism. So often, indeed, was this cry 
heard and so bitter was its tone, that when 
Marie Antoinette wished to enjoy herself 
again with her sledges, it was deemed ex- 
pedient to prevent it, for fear the sight of 
such luxury should prove an irritation to 
the suffering people. 

At this time, too, the French soldiers 
returning from their term of service in 
America, full of enthusiasm for the cause 
for which they had been fighting side by 
side with the Colonists, urged upon their 
countrymen the expediency of obtaining for 



THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

themselves what the Americans, with their 
aid, had procured by their long war of 
revolution. These returned soldiers were 
justly proud of their achievements in our 
War of Independence, in whose benefits 
they could have no part. But they natu- 
rally expected that their valor in serving 
their king would stand them in good stead 
at home. They found, however, that Gen- 
eral Count Sagur, whom the queen had 
made minister of war, had issued orders 
making it impossible for any but noblemen 
to reach the grade of officer in the army. 
The war being over, a great many promo- 
tions were made, but not in the way of 
rewards to men who had rendered service 
to their country. 

The only question asked of a candidate 
was, " Have you four quarterings ? " If he 
had not, nothing could enable him to rise 
from the ranks. 

It is worth remarking that in the mid- 
dle of this very winter, young Napoleon 
Bonaparte, then in his fifteenth year and a 
student at the military college of Brienne, 
divided his schoolmates into two armies. 



IN RETIREMENT 




A comer of Du Barry's hedchamher in the palace at Versailles. 



directed them in the construction of a snow 
fortress, and himself led the attacking 
party. For ammunition, they had snow- 



234 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

balls hard as ice, and in some cases, weighted 
with stones. And history declares that not 
until the fortress was entirely demolished 
did its defenders surrender to the future 
Emperor of France. 

There were many in the court circle at 
this time who recalled with feelings of dire 
apprehension the extraordinary prediction 
once made in the salon of Madame de 
Coigny by that charming epigramist and 
poet, Cazotte, who, at that time, divided 
with Cagliostro and Mesmer the honors of 
clairvoyance. Cazotte was a man of 
dreamy religious sentiment, highly imagi- 
native and a mystic. He did not pretend 
to make diamonds and gold, to heal the 
sick, or give public exhibitions of science 
combined with quackery, as his rivals did, 
but occasionally he went into a trance, and 
it was then that he was supposed to be 
endowed with second sight. 

It was on one of these occasions that he 
simply heaved a deep sigh and gave no an- 
swer to the question of two or three ladies 
of the court circle who demanded eagerly 
the na^ture of his vision. 




I 



IN RETIREMENT 237 

" Speak, Cazotte ! " cried the ladies. " Tell 
us what you see ! " 

" Do not ask me. It is too sad ! " 

"You must tell us what it is," per- 
sisted the ladies, as they gathered about 
him. 

" Fearful things are coming on France, 
coming upon you all — even upon you who 
speak to me," he replied at last in tones of 
a half-conscious person. 

" But what is it that you see ?" they 
demanded. 

" I see a prison," said Cazotte, shuddering, 
" a cart, a large open place, a strange kind 
of machine resembling a scaffold, and the 
public executioner standing near it." 

" And these things — the scaffold and 
the executioner are for me ? " asked Madame 
de Montmorency. 

" For you, madame," replied the seer. 

" Do you see me there, Cazotte ? " asked 
Madame de Chabot, laughingly. 

" 1 see you there," he said. 

" You are mad to-night, Cazotte," cried 
Madame de Chevreuse, " or you are trying 
to frighten us." 



THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

" Would to Heaven, for your sake, 
madame, that I were," he exclaimed. 

" You say you see a cart ; is it not a 
carriage, Cazotte ? " inquired Madame de 
Montmorency. 

•* It is a cart," he answers. " To none, 
after the king, will the favor of a carriage 
be allowed." 

" To the king ! " exclaimed several of the 
company who had not hitherto joined in 
questioning the dreamer. " To the king ? " 
demanded Madame du Polignac, addressing 
herself directly to Cazotte. 

" To the king," he muttered, despond- 
ingly. 

" But the queen, — myself ? " she asked 
eagerly. 

" The queen, too, is there. Madame de 
Poliffnac stands in the distance and a mist 
envelops her," was his reply. 

" And yourself, Cazotte ? " 

" As regards myself," he answered sadly, 
" I am as the man who for three days went 
round the City of Jerusalem, crying aloud, 
' Woe ! Woe ! ' to the inhabitants thereof, 
but who on the fourth day cried ' Woe ! 



IN RETIREMENT 

Woe!' unto himself — 'woe is me!' A 
stone from a sling was aimed at him, struck 
him on his temple and he died." 

Cazotte was guillotined in 1702. The 
rest of his predestined victims perished at 
about the same time, though Madame de 
Polignac lived until the following year and 
died in December, at Vienna, a place of 
safe distance, that was perhaps signified 
by the mist in which Cazotte saw her 
enveloped. 





CHAPTER XI 




THE STORM BREAKS 

OR more than fifteen 
years Jeanette Du 
Barry had Hved quietly 
on her beautiful estate 
Louveciennes, keeping 
up a few of her old 
court intimacies, re- 
ceiving visits now and then from foreign 
princes and other distinguished travellers, 
and enjoying a calm, happy life in which 
there was neither intrigue nor agitation nor 
danger of dismissal and disgrace. Her 
affairs were prosperous, her debts settled, 
and she was able to live handsomely and 
have money to spare for her friends and 
for charity. She was greatly beloved by 
the poor and sick of the neighborhood 
whom she visited and aided, and there was 



THE STORM BREAKS 241 

no one in the town who had not a kind 
word for the ex-Favorite of Louis XV. 

Undoubtedly these years of exile were 
the happiest in her whole life, and well 
they might have been, for through them 
all she was sustained and cheered by the 
devoted love of Cosse-Brissac. 

As years rolled on travellers ceased to 
visit her, her name dropped out of the 
public prints, and finally she came to be 
forgotten of all the wodd save the little 
one of her immediate vicinage. Her sym- 
pathies were still with the royal family, and 
she was outspoken in her denunciations of 
the revolutionary party, which was gaining 
in strength every hour, for the indignities 
which it sought to heap upon the heads of 
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. 

The deluge long since predicted by the 
Marquise de Pompadour was underway at 
last, and the axe that may have disturbed 
the visions of Louis XV, that certainly 
gleamed through the prophetic warning of 
Damiens — "the shabby man with the 
penknife" who was so far ahead of his 
time — the axe that the actress sees in 

16 



242 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

the very first act of the drama has become 
a stern reahty now. The days are begin- 
ning to be busy ones for the executioner, 
and those who value their heads are hasten- 
ing to declare their friendship for the 
nation and their hatred of royalty and 
aristocracy. 

So completely forgotten was the woman 
who had played such a conspicuous part at 
the court of the king that up to the begin- 
ning of the year 1791 no attention was 
paid to her by the aggressive patriots of 
the revolutionary party nor had her name 
been dragged into the papers or political 
discussions for many years, save once when 
some demagogue declared that the National 
Assembly cost but a quarter of the sum 
that Louis XV squandered on the woman 
whom he himself had seen covered with 
diamonds and giving away basketfuls of 
louis d'or to her relatives. 

In all probability the black storm which 
was now gathering over France might have 
broken and spent its terrific force without 
making itself felt in the little chateau 
where this still beautiful survivor of the 



THE STORM BREAKS 245 

court of Louis XV was living out her 
days peacefully and secure in the good 
will of all around her, had it not been for 
a comparatively unimportant happening 
which served to alter the whole course of 
her life. 

On the night of January 10, 1791, dur- 
ing the absence of Madame Du Barry, 
who was visiting the family of Brissac in 
Paris, the chateau was opened by robbers 
and a vast number of diamonds and other 
precious stones were stolen. In her en- 
deavors to recover her property, she took 
into her confidence the jeweller Rouen, and 
he, in an ill-considered moment, caused 
the dead walls of Paris to be placarded 
with a long list of the precious stones, de- 
scribed in detail under the words "Two 
Thousand Louis To Gain." 

This happened at a moment when 
hunger, cold and misery, combined with 
the insidious oratory of demagogues and 
the inspiring words of patriots, were lead- 
ing the people at a rapid pace toward an- 
archy — Nature's primitive remedy for all 
social ills. These placards were displayed 



M6 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

before the eyes of men and women who 
were suffering for want of the bare neces- 
sities of hfe. Being without occupation 
they could find time to read and talk over 
among themselves the great list of dia- 
monds, sapphires, emeralds, rubies and 
pearls. And as they read, and wondered 
how one human being could be so fortu- 
nate as to possess all this wealth while they 
went naked and hungry, they remembered 
who and what this almost forgotten woman 
had been. They had heard, perhaps, in an 
exaggerated form, of the way in which 
kings were wont to cover the bodies of 
their favorite women with diamonds while 
the peasantry perished of hunger and cold. 
They had heard vaguely of luxury in high 
places, of the wastefulness in Versailles, 
while the poor were clamoring for bread 
at the very palace gates. They had heard 
all these things from the lips of their ora- 
tors, half believing perhaps and wholly un- 
comprehending the significance of it all. 

Now, all at once, there was flashed into 
the wan faces of these desperate ones a list 
of the very jewels that had gone to deck 



/ 



THE STORM BREAKS 



247 



the body of their king's courtesan at the 
time when they themselves perhaps had 
seen their loved ones sicken before their 
eyes and perish for lack of food. The mere 
fact that a man of affairs 
like Rouen should placard ^ 
the streets with such an 
incendiary docu- 
ment as this 
without ever 
thinking of 
what it might 
provoke, indi- 
cates how 
little even 
the intelligent 
part of the 
French peo- 
ple knew of 
the dangers 

that threatened. This, too, at a time when 
the Revolution had actually begun. 

About the middle of February of the 
same year five men entered the shop of M. 
Simon, the rich London lapidary, and 
offered to sell him a quantity of precious 




Spinnet of the period. 



248 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

stones for which they asked only about 
one-sixth of their actual value. The lapi- 
dary purchased them for fifteen hundred 
pounds, and on learning from the men that 
they had others of still greater value to 
dispose of, promised to take them also, and 
then quietly notified the authorities. The 
men were arrested that night, and although 
they contrived to destroy one or two of the 
larger gems by throwing them into the fire, 
the bulk of their booty was recovered and 
word sent to the Countess Du Barry. 

Overjoyed at the news, she left at once 
for London, saw the jewels and identified 
them, declaring under oath that tliey be- 
longed to her. Unfortunately other legal 
proceedings were necessary before the gems 
could be turned over to her and she was 
obliged to return to France, after leaving 
them deposited with her bankers, sealed 
with her own and their seal. 

On the 4th of April she started again, 
taking with her this time the jeweller, 
Rouen, and remaining until the 21st of 
May, when she returned again without 
her property. A third journey followed 



THE STORM BREAKS 249 

from which she returned late in August, 
feehng much cast down and disappointed 
over the tediousness of Enghsh law pro- 
cesses. After Madame Du Barry's return 
to France the National High Court entered 
upon its functions at Orleans and the new 
method of beheading prisoners by the 
guillotine was adopted. It is said that a 
model of this machine fell under the eyes 
of Louis XVI at the time that it was under 
legislative consideration, and he, being an 
expert amateur machinist, suggested an 
improvement which was actually utilized 
by the inventor and is still in use in the 
machine that is used in France at the 
present day. 

Things were marching briskly now and 
the work of the executioner was growing 
heavier every day. Lafayette, who, since 
his return from America, had been a domi- 
nant figure in the changing fortunes of his 
country, was compelled to leave France 
and fell into the hands of the Austrians, 
who kept him in prison until years after- 
wards when Napoleon Bonaparte demanded 
his release. The king and royal family 



250 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

were made prisoners and, what was of far 
greater concern to Madame Du Barry, her 
devoted lover, Cosse-Brissac, who had 
been removed from his command of the 
king's mihtary estabhshment, was beheaded, 
together with hundreds of other prisoners 
in the September massacres. His head 
was carried to Louveciennes and thrown 
through the window of the room in which 
Madame Du Barry was seated. 

In October of the year following, Mad- 
ame Du Barry started once more for I^on- 
don from which she returned in IMarch, 
1793. During this, as well as other visits 
to England, she received attentions from 
the hands of many of the most noted men in 
the kingdom, and as it afterwards transpired, 
her movements were carefully watched and 
noted by spies in the employ of her ene- 
mies at home. During her last visit the 
Revolution had gained terrific headway, 
the king and queen had perished on the 
scaffold, and William Pitt, whom she saw 
a number of times and who gave her a 
medal that had been struck in his honor, 
urged her to remain in England, knowing 




With Breaking Heart. 



THE STORM BREAKS 255 

perfectly well the risk that she ran in 
returning to a country that was inflamed 
against the old monarchy and everything 
connected with it. 

Madame Du Barry, however, had full con- 
fidence in the protection that would be af- 
forded her in Louveciennes, which she had 
left but a short time before a peaceful com- 
munity, undisturbed by the storms that 
were shaking the country to its founda- 
tions, and inhabited by people who were 
one and all grateful to her for what she 
had done for them. 

During her absence, however, a man 
named George Greive, who claimed citizen- 
ship in the United States of America, and 
described himself as " factionist and anar- 
chist of the first rank and disorganizer of 
despotism in both hemispheres," had settled 
in the village and impregnated its inhabi- 
tants with the doctrines which he preached. 
This demagogue was a friend of Marat and 
was actually to have dined with him on the 
day that Charlotte Corday rid the world of 
his presence. Marat always hated Du Barry, 
and it is more than likely that he suggested 



254 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

her to Greive as one whom it would be easy 
to destroy and whose wealth was sufficient 
to yield something to the instrument of her 
destruction. 

Through the exertions of this patriot, 
who at Marat's suggestion had lost no time 
in domiciling himself in Louveciennes, the 
villagers were persuaded that JVIadame Du 
Barry had really turned emigi^ee, and had 
settled in England without any intention 
of returning to her own country. Imbued 
with this belief, seals were set on the doors 
of her chateau as a preliminary step to con- 
fiscation. But the sudden appearance of 
the owner put a stop to this work, and the 
mayor of the town was easily induced to 
remove the seals. Undismayed by the fail- 
ure of this plot, and knowing Du Barry's 
popularity among the villagers, Greive's 
next attempt took the form of an address 
to the authorities of the Department of the 
Seine et Oise, in which, backed by the sig- 
natures of thirty-six citizens of the village, 
he complained of the presence there of many 
aristocrats and suspected persons. On the 
strength of this address, Madame Du Barry 



THE STORM BREAKS 255 

was placed under arrest in her own house, 
and, after official inquiry, was set at liberty 
again, the authorities of the Seine et Oise 
showing no disposition to deal harshly with 
her. One of its members, indeed, Lavallery 
by name, is said to have shown a decided 
partiality for this still handsome and attrac- 
tive woman of fifty. 

Had Madame Du Barry procured her 
passports and repaired to England the mo- 
ment she was released, she would undoubt- 
edly have enjoyed a much longer life than 
she did. Unfortunately for herself, she 
chose to remain in her chateau, trusting 
to the integrity of her respectable neigh- 
bors, and fearing that if she did leave the 
country, her house, with all its exquisite 
furniture and works of art, would be confis- 
cated by the republicans. It may have 
been that another lover engrossed her at- 
tention at that time — it seems that she 
was never at a loss for a sweetheart — but 
certain it is that she chose to remain and 
she paid dearly for the mistake. 

Early in September, 17.93, Greive began 
again his denunciations of her, and on the 



256 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

2 2d of that month she was arrested and 
lodged in the prison of Sainte Pelagie, 
while seals were placed upon the doors of 
her chateau. Madame Roland was incar- 
cerated there at this time, and it has been 
said that the widow of the recently guil- 
lotined General Beauharnais, afterwards 
Empress of France, was arrested on the 
same day. 

There is a story told of the ex-Favorite 
during her imprisonment which, although 
characteristic of her in many ways, can 
hardly be reconciled with her conduct a 
short time later, when brought face to face 
with death on the scaffold. An Irish priest, 
who had contrived to obtain access to her 
in her cell, offered to save her if she could 
supply him with a certain sum of money 
with which to bribe the jailers. She asked 
him if it would be possible to save two 
women, and on learning that it would not, 
she gave him an order on her bankers for 
the necessary sum, and bade him save the 
Duchesse de Mortemart, who was at that 
time lying concealed in a loft in Calais. 
The priest, having urged her in vain to 



THE STORM BREAKS 



257 



permit him to save her instead of her friend, 
took the order, and with the money which 
he obtained on it, went to Calais and 
rescued the duchess from her attic retreat. 
Then taking her by the arm, he set out on 
foot, explaining to all who noticed his cleri- 
cal garb, that he was a good constitutional 
priest and as such had married the woman. 
In this way he managed to pass through 
the French lines to Ostend, where he em- 
barked for England, taking with him the 
duchess, who, in after years, related the 
whole story to Dutens, the author of " Me- 
moirs of a Traveller taking a Rest," in which 
entertaining volume it is chronicled. 




17 





CHAPTER XII 

DREYFUS-LIKE JUSTICE 

HE methods employed 
in the trial of Madame 
T)u Barry would seem 
incomprehensible to 
American readers, were 
it not for the fact that 
the Dreyfus trial, con- 
ducted on similar lines a very few years 
ago, served to familiarize us with the man- 
ner in which French tribunals administer 
the Gallic equivalent of justice. We all 
remember the important testimony offered 
by the different French officers, who knew 
that Dreyfus was guilty, " because it could 
not be otherwise," and the weighty evidence 
of those who made a profound impression on 
the court by declaring that the prisoner was 
certainly guilty, "because if he was not, 
who was ? " We can also recall the pub- 




^ 






DREYFUS-LIKE JUSTICE 261 

lished accounts of the execrations hurled by 
the populace at those who endeavored to 
stem the fierce tide of racial hatred evoked 
by the trial, and of the applause which 
greeted that " hero of the hour," who was 
shown to have taken away the captive's 
writing paper and ink. 

For the name Dreyfus, substitute that of 
Jeanette Du Barry, go back a little more 
than a century in time, and not a single 
degree in civilization or mercy, and we 
have the trial of the last of the race of 
queens of the left hand that France has 
ever known. 

She was accused of conspiring against 
the French Republic and favoring the suc- 
cess of English arms ; of wearing mourning 
for the late king ; of having in her posses- 
sion a medal of Pitt, the English states- 
man ; of having buried at Louveciennes the 
letters of nobility of an emigre, and also the 
busts of persons prominent at the court of 
her royal lover ; and of having wasted the 
public money by her extravagance. 

The first witness against her was Greive, 
who testified that he had found near her 



262 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

house a quantity of precious stones, together 
with portraits of Louis XV, Anne of Aus- 
tria, and the Regent, and a medal bearing 
the hkeness of Pitt. He also testified that 
an English spy named Forth made fre- 
quent journeys between Louveciennes and 
London, ostensibly on business connected 
with the diamond robbery, and that the 
general opinion of the villagers was that 
the robbery was nothing but a pretence. 

A man named Blache swore that Madame 
Du Barry wore mourning for Louis XVI 
when she was in London, and one of her 
discharged servants, Salanave, declared that 
his dismissal from the household was due 
to the fact that he was a patriot, whereas all 
the other servants sympathized with the 
aristocracy. 

Then Zamore, the black dwarf, who owed 
everything that he possessed to the favor of 
his mistress, swore that most of her guests 
were not patriots, and that he himself had 
heard them rejoice over the defeats of the 
armies of the Republic. He declared that 
he had frequently rebuked Madame Du 
Barry for associating with aristocrats and 



DREYFUS LIKE-JUSTICE 

that he was positive that there had been 
no actual robbery of jewels. 

These were the most important wit- 
nesses for the prosecution. There were 
also a surgeon named Augustin Devrey, 
who testified that he had " once heard the 
Widow Collet say that some time after 
the arrest of Brissac, Du Barry spent 
the night in destroying papers ; " and one 
Claude Reda, a fencing master, who 
gravely declared that he "had heard it 
said that when Du Barry was in London 
she saw the Colonnes." 

Certainly there is a Dreyfus-like ring, as 
well as a suggestion of the mental capac- 
ity of the jury, in these passages taken from 
the speech of Fouquier-Tinville for the 
prosecution : " You have judged the con- 
spiracy of the wife of the last tyrant of the 
French, and you have at this moment to 
judge the plots of the courtesan of his in- 
famous predecessor. You have to decide 
if this Messalina — born amongst the peo- 
ple, enriched by the spoils of the people 
and who, by the death of the tyrant, fell 
from the rank in which crime alone had 



264 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

placed her — has conspired against the 
Hberty and sovereignty of the people ; if, 
after being the accomplice and the instru- 
ment of the libertinage of kings, she has 
become the agent of the conspiracies of 
tyrants, nobles, and priests against the 
French Republic. You know what light 
the evidence of the witnesses and the 
documents have thrown upon this plot ! 
It is for you, in your wisdom, to weigh 
the evidence. You see that royalists, 
federalists, all these factions, though di- 
vided amongst themselves in appearance, 
have the same centre, the same object, the 
same end. 

" The war, abroad or in La Vendee, the 
troubles in the South, the insurrections in 
Calvaldos — all march under the orders of 
Pitt, but now the veil which covered so 
much wickedness has been rent in twain 
and nothing remains of the conspirators 
but shame and the punishment of their 
infamous plots. Yes, Frenchmen, we 
swear that the traitors shall perish and 
liberty alone shall endure! In striking 
with the sword of the law a conspiratrice. 



DREYFUS-LIKE JUSTICE 



265 




A corner of the property room. 

a Messalina guilty of plotting against the 
country, you not only avenge the Re- 
public, but you uproot a public scandal, 
and you strengthen the rule of that mo- 



266 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

rality which is the chief base of the Hberty 
of the people." 

With Madame Du Barry were tried also 
the three Vandenyvers, members of the 
firm of Dutch bankers with whom she 
kept her account. The chief charge 
against these men was that they had fur- 
nished the accused woman with money in 
the shape of letters of credit to be used by 
her during her visit to London. Accord- 
ing to their own admission, they furnished 
letters of credit to Madame Du Barry 
" because she had established the fact and 
satisfied them as to her having passports, 
and, not being judges of their validity, 
thought there was nothing in supplying 
her with the sums she demanded." 

There was not a particle of evidence of 
any sort of crime on the part of these finan- 
ciers. The principal figure in the trial was 
known to be a woman of loose morals, 
upon whom had been squandered millions 
of the public money, and it was not un- 
natural that the vengeance of a long suf- 
fering and now bloodthirsty people should 
fall upon her head. For the murder of 




"■JS^ *^gt^^^ 










DREYFUS-LIKE JUSTICE 269 

the Vandenyvers, however, there was not 
one shadow of an excuse. 

No witnesses were called for the defence. 
Nor is this fact likely to prove a surprise 
to any one familiar with the proceedings 
in the Dreyfus case, or with certain still 
more recent happenings in New York. 
We all know how it fared with Zola be- 
cause of his championship of the weak 
against the strong, and such of us as live 
in New York, believe that if there is one 
thing more unlucky than walking under a 
ladder, it is giving testimony in the courts 
against a police detective. 

That the jury had some qualms of con- 
science about this blood-letting is indicated 
by the fact that it deliberated for an hour 
and a quarter, which is one quarter of an 
hour more than was given to the considera- 
tion of the case of Marie Antoinette. At 
the end of that time it returned a verdict of 
guilty on every count in the indictment, 
and, Fouquier-Tinville having demanded 
the " application of the law," all four pris- 
oners were sentenced to suffer death within 
the space of twelve hours. 



270 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

But Madame Du Barry, hoping to gain 
time and perhaps mercy, sent for Denisot, 
one of her judges, Claude Rougere, the 
Deputy Public Accuser, and Tavernier, a 
grejjier, and to them made a confession or 
declaration in regard to her concealed prop- 
erty. To these men she gave a list of 
about two hundred and fifty articles of jew- 
elry and gold and silver plate which, to- 
gether with several sacks of money, she 
had buried in different parts of her garden. 
In her terror, and perhaps without a thought 
of what she was doing, she did not hesitate 
to implicate in her confession those who 
had helped her in her work of concealment, 
some of whom paid with their lives the 
penalty of their devotion to her. She firmly 
believed that if she gave up everything her 
life would be spared. But no sooner was 
the confession ended than orders were 
given for her execution on the following 
day. 

In the memoirs of the de Goncours we 
find this striking picture of the last of the 
favorites during the few hours that imme- 
diately preceded her death : 



DREYFUS-LIKE JUSTICE 271 

" At the reading of this sentence, pros- 
trated, overwhehned by stupor and horror, 
Madame Du Barry suddenly lost the cool- 
ness and the remnant of dignity which she 
had exhibited during the trial. When she 
saw that all was over, that she was about 
to be led away and that the witnesses who 
had been present during the scene rubbed 
their hands and enjoyed her agony shame- 
lessly, she was stricken with such a physi- 
cal weakness that the gendarmes were 
obliged to support her with their arms, 
while the fear that she would die before 
reaching the scaffold took possession of the 
anxious multitude. 

" The trouble, the fright, the utter help- 
lessness, the prostration of the woman in 
the presence of death — and of such a death 
— was so great that she, who all her life 
had thought only of living, in one moment 
forgot everything, affection, gratitude, debts 
of love, sacred engagements, the secrets 
and the devotion of those who had compro- 
mised themselves for her. Hoping to save 
her life by selling the lives of others, 
believing that she could buy pardon, or at 



272 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

least a reprieve by giving up what remained 
of hidden treasure, we find her on the day 
of her execution at ten o'clock in the morn- 
ing, quite pale after a night of terror, 
trembling and supplicating between the 
two wickets of the Conciergerie, flinging 
toward the advancing executioner, toward 
the hour of doom so nigh, toward the guil- 
lotine looming about her, the precipitate 
and breathless confession of everything that 
she had buried, concealed and kept back 
from the scent of the Republic and from 
the cupidities of the year II ! To Justice 
Denisot, to Claude Rougere, substitute of 
the public prosecutor, Madame Du Barry 
gives detail as to the precious objects buried 
in the garden of Louveciennes, buried in 
the thickets, concealed in the corridors and 
in the cellar, in the garden of her valet, 
that faithful Morin who will afterwards pay 
with his head for his mistress's disclosure, 
concealed in the house of the woman 
Deliant, concealed on the premises of Citi- 
zen Montrouy. 

" Under the stroke of terror, she remem- 
bers and finds everything again, bit by bit. 



DREYFUS-LIKE JUSTICE 273 

louis by louis, down to a plate, down to a 
spoon, for it is her life that she is going to 
recover. In her zeal, in her anguish, fearing 
that all this treasure will not suffice still to 
pay for her pardon, she undertakes to write 
to London, if it is the good pleasure of the 
Tribunal, to get back all the articles in the 
theft of 1791 deposited with Morland, with 
Moncelet and with Ramson. Unhappy 
being ! She forgot that the Revolution 
would be her heir." 

Jeanette Du Barry met death in a way 
that even moved the blood-thirsty onlook- 
ers to something like pity. It was a time 
when the knife was for women as well as 
men and when courage at the supreme mo- 
ment of death was not a matter of sex. 
Marie Antoinette, Madame Roland, Char- 
lotte Corday and scores of others mounted 
the scaffiDld with faces that were calm and 
often smiling, and died without giving sign 
of fear. These women died for some prin- 
ciple in which they believed. Poor Du 
Barry, however, died only because of her 
beauty, which had turned the head of a king. 
And with that beauty faded, her royal lover 

18 



274 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

dead and gone, as well as the old order of 
things for which he stood, she had nothing 
to sustain her in her final hour. 

Crouching in the cart, and with a face 
as white as the robe she wore, she passed 
through the great crowd that had assembled 
to look upon the mistress of its former king. 
With her were the Vandenyvers and they 
sought to sustain her with words of cheer 
and encouragement. Her only replies, how- 
ever, were sobs and moans and inarticulate 
cries for mercy. Greive, the anarchist, was 
there among the rest, laughing heartily, as 
he afterwards said, at the grimaces of the 
unfortunate woman whom he had hounded 
to the scaffold. The cart entered the rue 
St. Honore and passed directly in front 
of Labille's shop, where, a quarter of a cen- 
tury before, she had learned her trade of 
bonnet-making. A score of girls, employed 
there now just as she had been in her young 
days, had stationed themselves on the bal- 
cony to obtain a glimpse of this world-famous 
beauty who had once been an apprentice 
herself in that very shop, had lived to rule 
her king and to make and unmake cabinets, 



DREYFUS-LIKE JUSTICE 277 

and was now to crown her whole marvel- 
lous career with a single moment of anguish 
on the block. 

At the sight of these girls looking down 
upon her with pitying eyes, the condemned 
woman seemed to awake to a sudden and 
hideous realization of what was before her, 
and shriek after shriek rang through the 
crowded street. The executioner and his 
assistants used all their force in their efforts 
to prevent her from throwing herself to the 
ground. Foiled in this desire, she leant over 
the edge of the cart and frantically begged 
for her life. 

'* My friends, save me ! I have never 
done harm to any one in my life ! In 
Heaven's name, save me ! " 

It was almost the first time that the 
spectacle of a woman dying in abject terror, 
and without even a show of bravado, had 
been seen in Paris, and something like a 
murmur of pity began to make itself heard. 

" Life ! Life ! Give me my life, good 
people, and all my goods shall be yours ! " 
she implored. 

" Your goods ! Bah ! They all belong 



278 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

to the nation already ! " cried a man con- 
temptuously, and a coalheaver standing in 
front of him turned and levelled him to the 
earth with a single blow in the face. 

The people approved the act. The pity- 
ing murmurs grew louder, and if the driver 
had not urged his horse to a gallop, there 
might have been a rescue. 

Arrived at the gallows, it was necessary 
for the executioners to lift her bodily from 
the cart and up the steps. Even when tied 
to the plank she struggled frantically and 
begged piteously for just one second more 
of life. The descending knife silenced her 
cries, and the executioner held up before the 
eyes of the crowd the bleeding head of the 
woman who had done little, indeed, to de- 
serve such a death. 

The last act of the play compresses into 
three short scenes the tragic, pitiable story 
of Du Barry's persecution and death. In 
the first of these scenes we see her living 
on her estate in Louveciennes, attended by 
her faithful servant Denys and one or two 
friends of her former years. Here, at the 
instigation of Greive, she is arrested, 



DREYFUS-LIKE JUSTICE 279 

although nineteen years have passed since 
death put an end to her relation with the 
king. These years have been full of 
changes, not only for her, but for all France 
as well, and in no respect are these changes 
shown more plainly than in the dresses of 
the revolutionary patriots. In the pre- 
ceding acts of the drama, we have only 
seen the laces, ruffles, small clothes and 
■ elaborate coiffures of a luxurious and disso- 
lute age. Now we see the ugly beginnings 
of the sort of dress to which we, of the 
present generation, have been condemned. 
Escorted by soldiers of the Republic, and 
with the angry murmurs of the mob ringing 
in her ears, she is taken away to Paris, and 
the scene changes to her prison cell in the 
Conciergerie. Here she is visited by 
Denisot, the judge of the revolutionary 
court, and two associates, who, while buoy- 
ing her up with vague hopes of a pardon, 
take from her a finger ring, the very last 
bit of property in her possession. This 
done, they withdraw, the sound of work- 
men, busy at the scaffold, is heard, and a 
moment later the priest enters to apprise 



280 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

her of the failure of her appeal and to hear 
her last confession. 

At no moment during the play does the 
actress make a more profound impression 
on her audience than in that in which she 
realizes for the first time that her last hope 
is gone and that she must die. 

Springing forward with a cry that is sur- 
charged with the bitterest anguish and de- 
spair, she begins the pleadings for life which 
do not cease until the very end. But the 
sentence has been pronounced, her petition 
for clemency refused, and her life must 
come to an end with to-morrow's sun. 

But it is the last scene which, more than 
all of the others, leaves its indelible mark 
on the memory. And this one is almost 
completely in accord with the happenings 
set down in history. In only one particular 
has Mr. Belasco made use of his license as a 
dramatist, and that is in bringing Cosse- 
Brissac on to the scene for a final word of 
farewell with the woman whom he had loved 
so fondly. The reason for this is obvious, 
though, as a matter of fact, Cosse had 
already been guillotined. 



CI 



r>Ie«d 



>f his Jicei 



David Belasco. 



DREYFUS-LIKE JUSTICE 281 

Surely the sternest preacher of morahty 
could ask no more convincing portrayal of 
the ending of a dissolute life than Mr. 
Belasco has given us in this awful repre- 
sentation of the passage of the once pam- 
pered and envied Favorite through the mob 
that surges about the cart that is taking 
her to the guillotine. 

It is midwinter in Paris, and the curtain 
rises on a scene through whose darkness 
nothing can be seen but the flakes of fall- 
ing snow. Almost imperceptibly the night 
fades before the cold gray light of early 
dawn, until there comes a moment when it 
is hard to realize that we are not actually 
gazing at a deserted street in which the 
snow is swiftly and silently falling. Little 
by little the day grows, and then we see 
that this deserted street is the rue St. 
Honore, and that the house directly in 
front of us is the shop of Madame Labille, 
where the milliner's apprentice, Jeanette 
Vaubernier, gained some of her earliest 
knowledge of the life in which she played 
such a picturesque and wanton part. 

The door of the shop opens and Hor- 



282 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

tense, the forewoman, who still carries in 
her heart a loving remembrance of the 
pretty, wilful Jeanette of other days, peers 
down the street through the falling flakes. 
The procession is on its way, and one after 
another the windows along the street are 
opened and heads thrust out to peer anx- 
iously in the direction from which the 
tumbrel bearing the condemned is ap- 
proaching, to the accompaniment of a 
hoarse clamor that grows in volume as it 
draws nearer. 

Soldiers take possession of the street 
and stand ready to keep back the mob of 
men, women and children that gather 
from every side, filling every doorway, 
climbing up on the steps of houses, and 
even swarming up to places of vantage on 
the statue in the square. 

Now comes the advance guard that in 
those days accompanied every victim of 
the reign of terror to the place of execu- 
tion. A bevy of brazen-faced young girls, 
called " cart swallows," appear dancing 
round the cart in which the last of the 
royal Favorites is taking her final journey. 




On the Way to Execution. 



DREYFUS-LIKE JUSTICE 285 

As they turn the corner, the mob bursts 
into hoarse shouts of triumph, and surges 
against the restraining hues of soldiers in 
a mad attempt to forestall the execu- 
tioner's work. 

It is a triumph of stage management, 
this mob, but which one of us, so absorb- 
ing is the interest in the play, stops to 
think of it ? Stage mobs there have been 
in New York a plenty, but never one like 
this. 

It was a wonderful mob, organized and 
directed according to the system in vogue 
in the Saxe-Meiningen Company, that 
roused itself under the spur of Marc 
Antony's oratory when Ludwig Barnay 
played at the Thalia Theatre nearly 
twenty years ago. There was another 
great mob in " Paul Kauvar " organized 
and directed by Steele IMackaye. Very 
effective, too, was the work of Heinrich 
Couried's mob when " The Weavers " was 
given at the Irving Place Theatre. There 
have been dozens of stage mobs that could 
be cited, but not one in any serious drama 
that was not black-browed and sullen in 



286 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

its whole attitude. Here, at one of the 
most tragic moments that can be imagined, 
the whole scene swarms with a mob which 
is exultant and greedy for the blood that 
is to come and which is nevertheless not 
sullen but sardonic. It is a mob that 
taunts its victim with her immoralities 
and fills the whole street with bursts of 
hideous laughter at the mere idea of this 
wretched woman ever having known a 
love that was pure and honest. 

There are a score of different well-con- 
ceived and carefully costumed Parisian 
types in this mob, but no one notices them. 
The entire interest of the audience is cen- 
tred in the jolting two-wheeled cart which 
pauses for a moment on its way to the 
scaffold in the Place de la Revolution. 
The cart has three occupants, — the exe- 
cutioner, red-capped and grim ; Jeanette 
Du Barry, white with fear ; and the priest 
in his black robe who remains with her to 
the end. 

It is difficult to conceive of such abject, 
pitiful terror as that shown by this wretched 
woman, who crouches at the feet of her 



" Swear on the Cross ! " 



DREYFUS-LIKE JUSTICE 287 

confessor, her beautiful hair cropped close 
for the knife, the ashen pallor of death 
already in her face. 

" Ha, ha ! You 're afraid to die ! " 
screams a woman in the mob. 

" Yes, I know I 'm afraid to die," she 
responds in piteous tones, and the street 
echoes with shrill, sardonic, mirthless 
laughter. 

From the balcony of the milliner's shop, 
Hortense, faithful and courageous, throws 
a bunch of violets into the cart, and utters 
a few words of farewell. The mob turns 
toward her with the fierce remonstrance of 
wild beasts threatened with the loss of 
their prey. 

Cosse, the one pure love of her life, 
presses close to her for a parting word, 
while the mob beats against the line of 
soldiery and curses and howls till the priest 
with uplifted cross commands them, in the 
name of the Lord, to allow the condemned 
woman to go in peace to her death. 

" It 's too bad, Cosse," she says at last, 
in a voice low and despairing and which 
finds its way into every heart in the audi- 



288 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 

ence, " it 's too bad we never went into the 
country to pick those violets." The driver 
cracks his whip, the wheels turn, and again, 
with blood-curdling shouts, the crowd 
surges around the cart as it passes on to 
the scaffold, and we who have watched the 
play can almost see the knife that awaits 
her coming, the same knife that gleamed 
across the actress's fancy the moment she 
set foot on the stage. 




PRINTED FOR FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
BY THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, JOHN WILSON 
AND SON (inc.), CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. 



J, 

73 . 



r' ' ' -J 






